Donald Q. Lamb, internationally recognized astrophysicist, was born in 1945 in Manhattan, KS. He has made seminal contributions to our understanding of supernova explosions, gamma-ray bursts, and X-ray stars. At MHS, Lamb was president of his senior class, participated in drama and science club, and lettered in track. In 1967 he earned a B.S. with Honors from Rice University and in 1974, a Ph.D. from the University of Rochester, both in physics.
Lamb is the Robert A. Millikan Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. He is the former 
Chair of the University of Chicago’s Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics. Lamb directs the Flash Center for Computational Science, which developed FLASH, a computer code used world-wide by scientists in a broad range of fields. He played a key role in founding the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which transformed astronomy. Lamb was also Mission Scientist for the High Energy Transient Explorer, a NASA satellite that established the sources of gamma-ray bursts.
Lamb is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has served as an officer of the American Astronomical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Physical Society. Active in science policy, he has served on many advisory committees of the National Academy of Sciences, National Laboratories, and NASA, and he was a member of President-Elect Obama’s Transition Team.