Wolf Cukier is an amateur astronomer from Scarsdale, New York who discovered a new planet while working as an intern at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. ^[1]

Wolf Cukier grew up in Scarsdale, New York and at 17 years old became one of the youngest people to discover a new planet. Wolf was working in his second internship at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland when he discovered TOI 1338 b. ^[2]

Wolf Cukier spent the summer of 2018 working on a Goldilocks Zone project under the mentorship of NASA aerospace technology researcher Ravi Kopparapu. In 2019, he was invited back and put under the care of NASA research scientist Veselin Kostov, who had never had an intern before. Kostov praised Culkier's ability to learn quickly, telling The Washington Post: ^[1]

During the summer of 2019, Wolf got to work with NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, known as TESS. According to NASA, TESS looks for periodic drops caused by planetary transits by monitoring the brightness of stars. Cukier knkew what to look for from his experience with Planet Hunters TESS citizen science project, which allows anyone to search TESS data and categorize star systems. Wolf Cukier alerted Kostov when he thought he saw something suspicious and the two of them combed through data for hours to confirm it: ^[1]

In a The Washington Post profile, Wolf revealed that he had his sight set on "Princeton University, Stanford University and MIT where he can major in astrophysics or physics." ^[1]

The planet Wolf discovered is now known as TOI 1338 b. It is nearly seven times as large as Earth and has two stars, oneof which is about 10 percent more massive than our sun and another which is a third of our sun’s mass and not quite as bright, according to NASA. ^[1]

TOI 1338 b was mentioned in a panel discussion at the 235th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Honolulu, Hawaii. While Wolf couldn't name the planet, his brother suggested it be named "Wolftopia". ^[1]