Thomas M. Dame is Director of the Radio Telescope Data Center at the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian, a Senior Radio Astronomer at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, and a Lecturer on Astronomy at Harvard University. He is best known for mapping the Milky Way galaxy in carbon monoxide and for the discovery of both the Far 3 kpc Arm and the Outer ScutumâÂÂCentaurus Arm of the Milky Way.
Dame graduated from Boston University in 1976 with a BA in Astronomy and Physics. He earned his Master's degrees and Ph.D. from Columbia University. His dissertation, earned under Patrick Thaddeus in 1983, was titled Molecular Clouds and Galactic Spiral Structure .
After earning his doctorate, Dame worked as the National Research Council resident research associate at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies from 1983 to 1984 and then as a research associate at the Columbia University Department of Astronomy. He moved to Harvard University with Thaddeus in 1986, becoming a teaching fellow in 1988. Dame is Director of the Radio Telescope Data Center at the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian.
Dame and Thaddeus have obtained what is by far the most extensive, uniform, and widely used Galactic survey of interstellar carbon monoxide (CO).
Dame discovered the Far 3 kpc Arm of the Milky Way in 2008 and the Outer Sct-Cen Arm in 2011.
Dame has authored or co-authored more than 100 research papers in astronomy.