Joseph Silk
Joseph Silk | |
|---|---|
| Born | 3 December 1942 London, England |
| Citizenship | UK United States[citation needed] |
| Alma mater | Clare College, Cambridge University of Manchester Harvard University |
| Awards | Royal Society Bakerian Medal (2007) Balzan Prize (2011) Gruber Prize in Cosmology (2019) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Cosmology |
| Institutions | Institut d'astrophysique de Paris University of Oxford University of California, Berkeley Johns Hopkins University |
| Doctoral students | Max Tegmark[1] |
Joseph Ivor Silk FRS (born 3 December 1942) is a British-American [citation needed] astrophysicist. He was the Savilian Chair of Astronomy at the University of Oxford from 1999 to September 2011.
He is an Emeritus Fellow of New College, Oxford[2] and a Fellow of the Royal Society (elected May 1999). He was awarded the 2011 Balzan Prize for his works on the early Universe.[3] Silk has given more than two hundred invited conference lectures, primarily on galaxy formation and cosmology.
Biography
[edit | edit source]He was educated at Tottenham County School (1954–1960) and went on to study Mathematics at the University of Cambridge (1960–1963), followed by a diploma in astrophysics at the University of Manchester under the supervision of Roger Jennison.[4] He obtained his PhD in Astronomy from Harvard in 1968, under the direction of David Layzer.[4] Silk took up his first post at Berkeley in 1970, and the Chair in Astronomy in 1978. Following a career of nearly 30 years there, Silk returned to the UK in 1999 to take up the Savilian Chair of Astronomy at the University of Oxford. He is currently Professor of Physics at the Institut d'astrophysique de Paris, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Homewood Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University (since in 2010), and was Professor of Astronomy at Gresham College from 2015 to 2019.[5]
Silk damping
[edit | edit source]The structure of the cosmic microwave background anisotropies is principally determined by two effects: acoustic oscillations and diffusion damping. The latter is also called collisionless or Silk damping after Joseph Silk.
Honors and awards
[edit | edit source]- 1972 and 1974 Sloan Research Fellow
- 1975: Guggenheim Fellow
- 1995: Fellow of the American Physical Society
- 1999: Fellow of the Royal Society
- 2007: Inclusion in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- 2008: Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society
- 2011: Balzan Prize for his works on the early Universe
- 2014: Member of the US National Academy of Sciences
- 2018: Henry Norris Russell Lectureship
- 2019: Gruber Prize in Cosmology with Nicholas Kaiser "for their seminal contributions to the theory of cosmological structure formation and probes of dark matter"[citation needed]
- 2020: Fellow of the American Astronomical Society[6]
- 2020: Nick Kylafis Lecturer[7]
Publications
[edit | edit source]
Silk has over 900 publications, nearly 200 as first author, of which 3 have been cited over 1000 times, over 50 have been published in Nature and 12 in Science.[8]
In 2011, Silk delivered a talk, "The Creation of the Universe," at the first Starmus Festival in the Canary Islands. The talk was subsequently published in the book Starmus: 50 Years of Man in Space.[9]
Books by Joseph Silk
[edit | edit source]- The Infinite Cosmos, Oxford University Press, 2006, Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- On the Shores of the Unknown: A Short History of the Universe, Cambridge University Press, 2005, Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value)., Google Link
- The Big Bang, W.H. Freeman, 2005, Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- Cosmic Enigmas, Springer, 1994, Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value)., Google Link
References
[edit | edit source]- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ a b Zierler, David. Interview of Joseph Silk by David Zierler on March 31, 2021. Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD USA. 2021 (accessed 21 June 2024)
- ^ "Gresham Professor of Astronomy" on the Gresham College website (accessed 27 July 2015)
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Google Scholar
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
External links
[edit | edit source]
- Introduction videos to Professor Silk and his work, upon his appointment to Gresham College in 2015 Archived 4 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine
- Joseph Silk International Balzan Prize Foundation
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- Living people
- 20th-century American astronomers
- Harvard University alumni
- Academic staff of the University of Paris
- University of California, Berkeley faculty
- Fellows of New College, Oxford
- Academics of Gresham College
- Recipients of the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society
- 20th-century British astronomers
- Fellows of the Royal Society
- 1942 births
- Savilian Professors of Astronomy
- Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
- 21st-century American astronomers
- Sloan Research Fellows
- People from Tottenham
- Scientists from London
- Fellows of the American Astronomical Society
- 21st-century British astronomers