{"id":25829,"date":"2025-04-12T09:00:35","date_gmt":"2025-04-12T09:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=25829"},"modified":"2025-04-12T09:32:58","modified_gmt":"2025-04-12T09:32:58","slug":"jonathan-mcdowell-on-retiring-from-harvard-and-leaving-the-u-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=25829","title":{"rendered":"Jonathan McDowell on Retiring From Harvard and Leaving the U.S."},"content":{"rendered":"
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Jonathan McDowell is a go-to expert for all things spaceflight. Thousands of subscribers read his monthly Space Report<\/a>, and far more people have seen him on cable news and other media platforms explaining unexpected events in orbit.<\/p>\n

But that has always been his side gig: For 37 years, Dr. McDowell has been a specialist in X-ray astronomy at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Earlier this year he announced he was retiring from the role, and also leaving the United States for Britain.<\/p>\n

The decision was prompted in part, he said, by ongoing pressures on the federal science budget, made more complicated by policy changes since President Trump\u2019s inauguration.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just doesn\u2019t seem like the opportunities are going to be there to be an effective scientist, and an effective person building the science community, in the U.S. anymore,\u201d Dr. McDowell said. \u201cI just don\u2019t feel as proud to be an American as I used to be.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Born with dual citizenship in the United States and Britain, Dr. McDowell joined the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in 1988 and leads the science data systems group there for NASA\u2019s Chandra X-ray Observatory<\/a>, a space telescope in its 26th year.<\/p>\n

In the next phase of his career, Dr. McDowell said, he wants to devote more time to documenting what\u2019s happening in space<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Jonathan McDowell is a go-to expert for all things spaceflight. Thousands of subscribers read his monthly Space Report, and far more people have seen him on cable news and other media platforms explaining unexpected events in orbit.But that has always been his side gig: For 37 years, Dr. McDowell has been a specialist in X-ray astronomy at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Earlier this year he announced he was retiring from the role, and also leaving the United States for Britain.The decision was prompted in part, he said, by ongoing pressures on the federal science budget, made more complicated by policy changes since President Trump\u2019s inauguration.\u201cIt just doesn\u2019t seem like the opportunities are going to be there to be an effective scientist, and an effective person building the science community, in the U.S. anymore,\u201d Dr. McDowell said. \u201cI just don\u2019t feel as proud to be an American as I used to be.\u201dBorn with dual citizenship in the United States and Britain, Dr. McDowell joined the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in 1988 and leads the science data systems group there for NASA\u2019s Chandra X-ray Observatory, a space telescope in its 26th year.In the next phase of his career, Dr. McDowell said, he wants to devote more time to documenting what\u2019s happening in space.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25831,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25829"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25829\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25832,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25829\/revisions\/25832"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}