Fred Adams is professor of physics at the University of Michigan, where his main field of research is astrophysics theory focusing on star formation, background radiation fields, and the early universe.
He was educated at Iowa State University, where he earned his B.S. in 1983, and at University of California, Berkeley, earning his Ph.D. in 1988. He continued his research at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.