Kim K. McLeod

Kim K. McLeod is an Associate Professor of Astronomy who has been at Wellesley College since 1997. Her primary research focuses on investigating the growth of galaxies over cosmic time by observing those with monstrous black holes (quasars) in their centers.

Dr. McLeod is a graduate of Cornell University, where she received a B.A. in Physics, magna cum laude, in 1988. She received a Ph.D. in Astronomy at the University of Arizona in 1994 for her work entitled “Near-Infrared Properties of Quasar and Seyfert Host Galaxies.” Dr. McLeod has also worked at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and held a Bunting Fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute.

As one of the first astronomers to apply the technique of near-infrared imaging to detect the galaxies in which quasars live, Dr. McLeod has become recognized as a leader in the field. Her work earned her observing time on the Hubble Space Telescope, which she used to image the hosts in unprecedented detail. The results helped to uncover a fundamental relationship between black holes and their host galaxies. Building upon her early work, Dr. McLeod used some of the world’s largest telescopes, in Chile and Hawaii, to look at the most distant quasars visible. These observations revealed clues about how galaxies formed in the early Universe.

Dr. McLeod has also applied similar analysis techniques to Hubble Space Telescope images of young brown dwarfs in our own Milky Way galaxy. She has helped to discover a protoplanetary disk around one, and possible giant planets around two others.

Despite having observed on sophisticated telescopes, Dr. McLeod thinks that none is as beautiful as Wellesley’s own 12” refractor, and she loves to share its views with students and the public.

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Profile last updated: 9/09