Caroff, Larry, 1941-

Biographical History

Lawrence John “Larry” Caroff was born in 1941 in Windber, Pennsylvania. In 1962 he received a BS in Engineering Sciences from Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. He went on to receive his PhD in Applied Physics in 1967 at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. He was employed at NASA from 1967 to 2001. Between the years 1970 and 2006 he published a number of papers on the topics of astrophysics and infrared astronomy in the Astrophysical Journal, the Journal of Plasma Physics, Nature, and Proceedings of the Royal Astronomical Society.

In 1967 Caroff gained employment at NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California as a Research Scientist. During this time, he did theoretical research in astrophysics and participated in observations from the Lear Jet Observatory (LJO), Kuiper Airborne Observatory (KAO), as well as Mauna Kea and Lick Observatories. In 1980 he was appointed Deputy Chief of the Space Science Division, and later took on the role of Chief of the Astrophysical Experiments Branch, which carried out research in infrared astronomy, instrumentation, atmospheric radiometry, and molecular spectroscopy. In 1985, he was appointed Project Scientist for the KAO, in which capacity he organized and led proposal reviews and served as a liaison to the community of astronomers using the facility.

In 1988, Caroff relocated to NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. During this time, he was Chief of the Infrared, Submillimeter, and Radio Astrophysics Branch (IR/SubMM/Radio Astrophysics) of the Astrophysics Division. He led a successful Infrared Astronomy program there for the next 9 years. During this time he was still involved with the KAO and the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA).

In 1997 he returned to Ames Research Center to serve as Deputy Director during the implementation and developmental stages of the NASA Astrobiology Institute. In 1999, he assumed the role of Deputy Program Manager and then Program Manager for SOFIA, managing that project until his retirement from NASA in 2001.

In addition, Caroff has co-organized a number of workshops including the Exozodiacal Dust Workshop at Ames Research Center (1999), the Pale Blue Dot Workshop at Ames Research Center (2000), and the Debris Disks and Star Formation meeting in Tucson, Arizona (2002). He has also taught classes in astronomy, astrophysics, and astrobiology at Stanford University, University of Oregon, San Francisco City College, and the University of California, Berkeley Extension and Stanford Continuing Education programs.

From the guide to the Lawrence J. Caroff Notebooks, 1986-2001, (Ames Research Center, )