Dr. John G. Baker is the 2008 recipients of the John C. Lindsay Memorial Award for Space Science. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., honors one or more of its civil servant space scientists each year with this award, which is the center's highest honor for outstanding contributions in space science. As long as he can remember, John has been interested in the nature of the world, a result of his natural appreciation and respect for it. Growing up, he was fascinated by how much he could learn with just careful observation and thought. Astronomy was particularly attractive, because the vast majority of the natural world is not on the Earth. Lying on the ground looking up into the sky, John remembers feeling like a speck on a small ball moving through immense space.

John grew up in the suburbs of Kansas City, Missouri, earning a B.S. in Physics with a minor in Philosophy from Northeast Missouri State University, now Truman State University. His PhD from Penn State is in - no surprise - gravitational physics. John's thesis work focused on understanding the consequences of Einstein's landmark theory of gravity. The theory provides specific predictions for strong gravitational physics in the merger of two black holes into one, and John's thesis addressed the dynamics of a distorted black hole formed by the merger of two black holes. For three years, John was a postdoc at the Albert-Einstein-Institut Potsdam, Germany. He was part of a large group attempting to develop techniques to solve Einstein's equations on supercomputers, the only way to understand the predicted behavior of those merging black holes. The center of his work there was the "Lazarus Project." ohn is now settled in as an astrophysicist in Goddard's Gravitational Astrophysics Laboratory. Since his arrival, the group's work -- along with revolutionary advances in the field of numerical relativity -- now allows them to routinely calculate the interactions of merging black holes to help them understand exactly how they emit their gravitational waves.