Tom Dame

Thomas M. Dame
Nationality	American
Fields	Astronomy
Institutions	Harvard University Columbia University Goddard Institute for Space Studies
Alma mater	Columbia University Boston University
Doctoral advisor	Patrick Thaddeus
Known for	Far 3 kpc Arm
Notable awards	Secretary's Research Prize, Smithsonian Institution, 2009

Thomas M. Dame is Director of the Radio Telescope Data Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, a Senior Radio Astronomer at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, and a Lecturer on Astronomy at Harvard University. He is best known for mapping the Milky Way galaxy in Carbon Monoxide and for the discovery of both the Far 3 kpc Arm and the Outer Scutum–Centaurus Arm of the Milky Way.

Dame graduated from Boston University in 1976 with a BA in Astronomy and Physics. He earned his Master's degrees and Ph.D. from Columbia University. His dissertation, earned under Patrick Thaddeus in 1983, was titled Molecular Clouds and Galactic Spiral Structure .

After earning his doctorate, Dame worked as the National Research Council resident research associate at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies from 1983 to 1984 and then as a research associate at the Columbia University Department of Astronomy. He moved to Harvard University with Thaddeus in 1986, becoming a teaching fellow in 1988. Dame is Director of the Radio Telescope Data Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Dame and Thaddeus have obtained what is by far the most extensive, uniform, and widely used Galactic survey of interstellar carbon monoxide (CO).

Dame discovered the Far 3 kpc Arm of the Milky Way in 2008 and the Outer Sct-Cen Arm in 2011.

Dame has authored or co-authored more than 100 research papers in astronomy.

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