Riccardo Giacconi

Physicist Riccardo Giacconi made several major breakthroughs in the nascent field of x-ray astronomy. Using rocket observation he discovered X-ray sources outside the solar system. Later, he built the first high-definition x-ray telescope, which launched in 1978 as the Einstein Observatory and led to many new discoveries. In 1976, he proposed another, more powerful instrument, which wasn’t launched until 1999 as the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2002. Updated 2009