UWM Manfred Olson Planetarium

A local non-profit bringing excitement about the cosmos and the beauty of the night sky to the community. The UWM Planetarium was constructed in 1966 and named after Manfred Olson (1905-1966), a physics professor at the university from 1931 to 1963. Olson worked at the University of Chicago in 1943, and from 1947 to 1949 was a senior physicist at Los Alamos, New Mexico, where he worked on Geiger counter systems. After retiring from UWM, he became the Planetarium Director and part-time lecturer in the physics department. Jean Creighton is the current director. She was born in Toronto, Canada, and moved as a child to Athens, Greece. Creighton obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in physics from the University of Athens-Greece. She crossed the Atlantic again to earn a degree in astronomy from Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and a Ph.D. in astrophysics from the University of Waterloo. In addition, Creighton did infrared satellite research at the California Institute of Technology from 1998-1999 before coming to Milwaukee to teach astronomy. Creighton became the Planetarium director in January 2007, and in the past four years she has organized approximately a thousand shows and special events.