Description: Stephen E. Thorsett, the 20th president of Willamette University, brings over two decades of experience as an academic leader. Learn about his career.
Stephen E. Thorsett became the 25th president of Willamette University on July 1, 2011. He is an internationally recognized astrophysicist who brings to Willamette more than two decades of experience as a scholar, teacher and academic leader.
Immediately preceding his arrival at Willamette, Thorsett was a professor and former chair of the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He also served as the dean of its Division of Physical and Biological Sciences, leading a unit roughly comparable to Willamette in terms of budget and numbers of faculty, staff and students. In addition to traditional math and science departments, his division included a nationally-recognized graduate certificate program in sc
During his academic career, Thorsett taught broadly in both physics and astronomy and has authored or co-authored more than 100 scientific publications, focusing on the late stages of stellar evolution. His work examines radio pulsars, general relativity in binary star systems, neutron stars, planets orbiting pulsars and highly energetic gamma ray bursts. Among his many accomplishments, Thorsett co-discovered the oldest known planet, popularly dubbed “the Methuselah planet.” As students, he and four friends