“Wonder” with Jean Creighton

Jean Creighton has always lived in cities where the lights tend to obscure the stars. This may be why she appreciates a Planetarium theater. Jean was born in Toronto, Ontario and grew up in Athens, Greece where her mother claims Jean showed a great interest in how stars form from the age of five. To understand better how the universe works, Jean studied Physics at the University of Athens. Her honors thesis was on the planet Neptune, which spurred her to cross the Atlantic to get a Master's degree in Astronomy from Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia and a Ph.D. in Astrophysics from the University of Waterloo.

From 1998-1999, Jean was involved in an infrared satellite called WIRE as a postdoctoral researcher at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Since September 1999, she has been teaching Astronomy at various levels at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and, in 2007, she became Director of the UWM Manfred Olson Planetarium. In 2014, Jean was selected by NASA to be an Airborne Astronomy Ambassador and to spend 20 hours in the stratosphere on SOFIA, the largest moving observatory in the world. In 2017, she was chosen for the University of Wisconsin System Regents Academic Staff Excellence Award. Jean is very proud to have shared the beauty of the night sky and the elegance of the cosmos with over 100,000 members of our community.