David Spergel has spent much of his career asking some of humanity’s oldest questions: How did the universe begin? What is it made of? And why does it look the way it does?
An astrophysicist and cosmologist, David helped transform our understanding of the universe through his work on the cosmic microwave background, dark matter, dark energy, and the large-scale structure of the cosmos. For decades at Princeton University, he was one of the leading figures in modern cosmology, helping turn the field into a precision science capable of measuring the fundamental properties of the universe with extraordinary accuracy.
His research played a central role in interpreting observations from NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), one of the most important astronomy missions ever flown. The mission helped determine the age, composition, and geometry of the universe with unprecedented precision, fundamentally changing our understanding of where we came from and how the cosmos evolved.
Today, David serves as President of the Simons Foundation, one of the world’s most influential supporters of basic scientific research. Under his leadership, the foundation invests in mathematics, physics, life sciences, neuroscience, and autism research, supporting scientists pursuing questions whose answers may not be known for decades.
What makes David remarkable is his ability to operate comfortably across vastly different scales. One day he might be thinking about the first moments after the Big Bang. The next, he might be helping shape the future of scientific discovery itself. In both roles, the underlying motivation is the same: expanding humanity’s understanding of the unknown.
I photographed David during a gathering of scientific leaders in the Bay Area. What struck me was a combination of intellectual depth and genuine curiosity. There was little sense of hierarchy or self-importance. Instead, there was the feeling of someone who remains genuinely fascinated by difficult questions and the people trying to answer them.
The universe is unimaginably large. Human knowledge remains astonishingly small. David Spergel has spent a lifetime helping us understand a little more of what lies beyond the edge of both.
