Wolf Cukier

Cukier's distinction is narrow and specific, and it is worth stating precisely. In July 2019, on roughly his third day as a high school intern at NASA Goddard, he identified a faint eclipse in TESS data that did not match either star in the TOI-1338 system. Follow-up work confirmed a planet between Neptune and Saturn in size, orbiting two stars about 1,300 light-years away, on a period of roughly 95 days. It was the first circumbinary planet the TESS mission found, and he was 17 years old when he spotted it.He shares credit with the team that trained and checked him, and he says so in every interview. What remains his alone is the noticing. The paper he co-authored has drawn close to 190 citations, and the story has proved durable enough to be retold in international press seven years later.