Astrophysicist. He was an American astrophysicist who was best known for his contributions to the understanding and explanation of the solar neutrino, development of the Hubble Space Telescope and leadership and development of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. While in high school, he did not have an interest in science. At one point, he considered becoming a rabbi. After graduating from high school, he became a student on a tennis scholarship at Louisiana State University, majoring in philosophy. When he transferred to the University of California Berkeley he was still majoring in philosophy and took his first physics class as a graduation requirement. Considered a late bloomer in science, he received an AB in physics from Berkeley in 1956. He went on to graduate work in physics at the University of Chicago, obtaining an MS in 1957 followed by studies at Harvard University, earning his PhD in physics in 1961. He worked at Caltech from 1962 to 1970. He became a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in in 1971, remaining at the institute until his death in 2005, at which time he held the title of Richard Black Professor of Astrophysics. In the 1960s, he and his physical chemist colleague, Raymond Davis, Jr. collaborated on the Homestake experiment, which was the first experiment to detect neutrinos emitted from the sun. Davis published his first paper on this research in 1964. Together, the two worked for over thirty years to resolve the discrepancies in detected neutrino. Research results were confirmed by Koshiba. Davis along with Japanese Masatoshi Koshiba were award half of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physic for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, in particular for the detection of cosmic neutrinos". In 2003, he, Davis and Koshiba shared the Benjamin Franklin Medal for their research on this. Bahcall received NASA's Distinguished Public Service Medal in 1992 for his work implementing and developing Hubble. The standard model of a galaxy, with a massive black hole surrounded by stars, is known as the Bahcall-Wolf model. And for many years the Bahcall-Soneira model was the model for the structure of the Milky Way. He also contributed to accurate models of stellar interiors. Author of more than 600 scientific papers and five books in the field of astrophysics, he received the Helen B. Warner Prize in 1970, the Heineman Prize in 1994, the Hans Bethe Prize and the National Medal of Science in 1998, the Henry Norris Russell Lectureship in 1999, the Dan David Prize, the Academy of Achievement Golden Plate Award in 2004 and the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society and the Fermi Award, which with Raymond Davis Jr. was co-recipient in 2003. According to his "Washington Post" obituary, "Many of his colleagues expected him to win a Nobel Prize."