Su-Shu Huang

Education and career

A native of China, Huang earned his master's degree at Tsing Hua University, lecturing in astronomy at that institution from 1943 to 1947 before immigrating to the United States, earning a doctorate in astronomy from the University of Chicago in 1949. After teaching astronomy at that institution for the two following years, Huang became an astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley, a position he stayed in before moving to the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland in 1959. Concurrent with his Goddard position, Huang was a member of Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton from 1960 to 1961, then a professor of astrophysics at the Catholic University of America from 1963 to 1964. In 1964, Huang became professor of physics and astronomy at Northwestern University, though he stayed at Goddard until 1965.

In his early years he studied two-electron systems, Huang later studied stellar atmospheres, radiative zones, and the dynamics of stars in binary or multiple star systems. Huang's research into the physics of stars later led him to delineate the types of stars that could support extraterrestrial life, leading to his coining of the term "habitable zone" and eventually his study of planetary habitability in a 1960 paper on the sizes of habitable planets. Huang's explorations into extraterrestrial life were also published in popular works, such as American Scientist and Scientific American.