Megan Donahue ’85 grew up on a small farm in Nebraska, where the local library became her window to a wider world. It was there, at age 12, that she found her passion for physics—a discovery that eventually set her on a path into astronomy, helped along by what she describes as a providential interaction.
At MIT, Donahue got involved in the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, which introduced her to cutting-edge x-ray imaging. She called the work “really cool,” and it shaped her future research. Today she is a professor of physics and astronomy at Michigan State University, where she studies galaxy clusters and the baryonic matter they contain—the ordinary protons and neutrons that make up stars, gas, and galaxies, as opposed to dark matter.
Donahue compares galaxy clusters to large scoops of the universe, much like taking a sample of ocean water to learn its average composition. Her goal is to better understand what the universe is made of and how it has evolved. From 2018 to 2020, she served as president of the American Astronomical Society, capping a career that began with a book in a Nebraska library.