Geoffrey William Marcy (born September 29, 1954) is an American astronomer. He was an early influence in the field of exoplanet detection, discovery, and characterization. Marcy was a professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, and an adjunct professor of physics and astronomy at San Francisco State University. Marcy and his research teams discovered many extrasolar planets, including 70 out of the first 100 known exoplanets and also the first planetary system around a Sun-like star, Upsilon Andromedae. Marcy was a co-investigator on the NASA Kepler mission. His collaborators have included R. Paul Butler, Debra Fischer and Steven S. Vogt, Jason Wright, Andrew Howard, Katie Peek, John Johnson, Erik Petigura, Lauren Weiss, Lea Hirsch and the Kepler Science Team. Early life and education Marcy graduated from Granada Hills High School in Granada Hills, California, in 1972. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts summa cum laude with a double major in physics and astronomy from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1976. He then completed a doctorate in astronomy in 1982 at the University of California, Santa Cruz, with much of his work done at Lick Observatory. Academic career Marcy has held teaching and research positions, first at the Carnegie Institution of Washington (then the Mt. Wilson and Las Campanas Observatories) as a Carnegie fellow from 1982 to 1984. He then worked as an associate professor of physics and astronomy from 1984 to 1996 and then as a distinguished university professor from 1997 to 1999 at the San Francisco State University. Marcy was a professor of astronomy and the Watson and Marilyn Alberts Chair for SETI at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1999 through 2015. From 2000 to 2012, he was the director of UC Berkeley's Center for Integrative Planetary Science. Marcy was also one of the project leaders of the Breakthrough Initiatives that will search for intelligent life in the universe, using large radio and optical telescopes. Marcy and his team confirmed Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz's discovery of the first extrasolar planet orbiting a Sun-like star—51 Pegasi b. Two months later, Marcy and his team announced the discovery of two additional planets around 47 Ursae Majoris and 70 Virginis. Other achievements include discovering the first multiple planet system around a star similar to our own (Upsilon Andromedae), the first transiting planet around another star, simultaneously with David Charbonneau and Timothy Brown (HD209458b), the first