Jane Luu

Jane Lưu
Jane Luu was the featured speaker at Stellafane, VT on Aug.3,2011
Born	July 1963 (age 53) Saigon, Vietnam
Residence	Lexington, Massachusetts
Fields	Astronomy, Astrophysics
Institutions	Harvard University, Lincoln Laboratory at MIT.
Alma mater	Stanford University, University of California at Berkeley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Thesis	Physical Studies of Primitive Solar System Bodies (1992 )
Doctoral advisor	David Jewitt
Known for	Discovery the Kuiper belt
Notable awards	Annie J. Cannon Award in Astronomy (1991) Shaw Prize (2012) Kavli Prize (2012)
Spouse	Ronnie Hoogerwerf

Dr. Jane X. Luu (Vietnamese: Lưu Lệ Hằng; born July 1963) is a Vietnamese American astronomer.

Luu was born in July 1963 in South Vietnam to a father who worked as a translator for the U.S. Army. Her father taught her French as a child, beginning her lifelong love of languages.

Luu immigrated to the United States as a refugee in 1975, when the South Vietnamese government fell. She and her family settled in Kentucky, where she had relatives. A visit to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory inspired her to study astronomy. She attended Stanford University, receiving her bachelor's degree in 1984.

As a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she worked with David C. Jewitt to discover the Kuiper Belt. In 1992, after five years of observation, they found the first known Kuiper Belt object other than Pluto and its largest moon Charon, using the University of Hawaii's 2.2 meter telescope on Mauna Kea. This object is (15760) 1992 QB₁, which she and Jewitt nicknamed "Smiley". The American Astronomical Society awarded Luu the Annie J. Cannon Award in Astronomy in 1991. In 1992, Luu received a Hubble Fellowship from the Space Telescope Science Institute and chose the University of California, Berkeley as a host institution. The Phocaea maine-belt asteroid 5430 Luu is named in her honor. She received her PhD in 1992 at MIT.