Linda Siobhan Sparke is a British astronomer known for her research on the structure and dynamics of galaxies.
She is a professor emerita of astronomy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison,[1] and Explorers Program Scientist in the NASA Astrophysics Division.
[1][3] She completed a Ph.D. in astronomy in 1981 from the University of California, Berkeley; her dissertation was Swirling Gas Flows in Elliptical Galaxies.
[6][7] Sparke was elected as a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2002, after a nomination from the APS Division of Astrophysics.
The fellowship citation noted her "studies of the structure and dynamics of galaxies, using orbital motions to probe both time-steady and time-varying gravitational potentials, and the distribution of dark matter".