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Carlos Frenk was born in Mexico City, Mexico, and is the eldest of six children.[3] His younger brother, Julio Frenk, is a public health expert and former Mexican Secretary of Health.[4] His father, a German-Jewish physician, emigrated from Germany to escape antisemitic persecution before World War II, while his mother was a Mexican–Spanish pianist.[5] As a youth, Frenk showed some basketball talent and played semi-professionally. His other passion was mathematics.[6]
Frenk initially studied engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico before switching to theoretical physics, earning his undergraduate degree in 1976.[1][5] He graduated with the highest marks in his year and was awarded the Gabino Barreda Medal.[6] While visiting Italy, he attended a guest lecture by Martin Rees, then a professor at the University of Cambridge. Encouraged by Rees, Frenk decided to apply to Cambridge rather than pursue his original plan to study at Caltech.[6]
That year, he secured a British Council Fellowship and enrolled at the University of Cambridge to read Part III of the Mathematical Tripos, which he completed in 1977. He remained at Cambridge for doctoral studies under the supervision of Bernard J. T. Jones.[7] His doctoral research explored the properties of the Milky Way.[6] The idea of dark matter was still "extremely speculative" at this point, but Frenk concluded that the galaxy was surrounded by "embedded" dark matter.[6][a] He was awarded his PhD in astronomy in 1981.[9]
At Cambridge, Frenk decided to shift his research focus to cosmology because he felt there was still plenty of "exciting problems" within this field left to be solved; he thought particle physics was "moving rather slowly" and, despite help from professors, could not identify a suitable fundamental physics project for doctoral research that engaged his interest.[10] He met future collaborator Simon White for the first time at Cambridge. White, already a post-doc, acted as what Frenk later called his "unofficial supervisor".[6]
Career and research
Early career, 1981–1986
Following Cambridge, Frenk worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California. He arrived at Berkeley in 1981, having been invited by Marc Davis, an astronomer who had recently left Harvard.[6] At Berkeley, Davis needed Frenk, with his background in theoretical physics, to assist in interpreting his research, which was based on a survey of approximately 2,200 galaxies conducted during his time at Harvard. Meanwhile, White had also moved to Berkeley.[6] This allowed Davis, Frenk, and White to collaborate on research into the early state of the universe through the use of computer modelling.[6]
As consensus grew during the late 1970s for the existence of dark matter, the neutrino was identified as a natural candidate. Davis, Frenk, and White concluded in a 1983 paper that dark matter could not be made of neutrinos; they argued that, even if neutrinos had the required mass, they would move too quickly to be able to 'clump together' and form galaxies.[6][11][12]
Frenk left Berkeley for nearby Santa Barbara in 1983. He was officially attached to the University of Sussex from 1984 to 1985.[3] During these two years, he frequently divided his time between Britain and America, having established a system of 'transatlantic commuting' by working alternately three months in Santa Barbara and three at the University of Sussex.[13]
Gang of Four
Computational astronomy was still an emerging discipline, and the trio of Davis, Frenk, and White knew they required extra support to produce more advanced computer code.[6][14]George Efstathiou, a recent PhD from Durham University, was recruited to help them.[6][14] With the addition of Efstathiou, the group worked on a series of papers; they focused on the supersymmetric theory that dark matter particles were "cold".[6]
In 1985, Frenk and his collaborators published an influential paper in The Astrophysical Journal that revealed the first simulations of cold dark matter.[15][b] Despite the limited computing power available to them, their research had produced results, and Davis, Efstathiou, Frenk, and White were nicknamed the 'Gang of Four' for the attention their arguments attracted.[6] Their combined efforts confirmed the validity of the "cold dark matter theory" for the formation of galaxies and other cosmic structures.[3] This model later became the prevailing interpretation in cosmology.[3]
Move to Durham, 1986–2001
In 1986, Frenk was appointed Lecturer at Durham University, having been recruited by Richard Ellis.[3][6] He later described finding the physics department in Durham to be "tiny" upon his arrival, with "no theory" and astronomy "non-existent".[6] With Ellis's support, he worked on strengthening the profile of the department in astronomical research, but struggled to access the computing power demanded by his computational approach.[6] After unsuccessful attempts to borrow computers from commercial laboratories, he finally secured a model from the MicroVAX series for £40,000.[6] Frenk was promoted to Reader in 1991 and then made a full Professor in 1993.[6] During this period of his career, he turned down job offers from both the United States and Mexico, including one position that would have more than doubled his salary.[13]
While their papers were impactful, Frenk and White's theories did not represent the scientific consensus at this time. Throughout the 80s and 90s, they faced significant critique by proponents of other dark matter theories.[6] The most prominent alternative theory was Modified Newtonian dynamics, proposed by Israeli physicist Mordehai Milgrom in 1981.[8] However, in 1993, evidence from the Cosmic Background Explorer offered further support for Frenk and White.[6][c]
Research efforts at Durham were boosted by the 1994 announcement of the High Performance Computing Initiative, which promised more resources from the government in future.[6] By now, White was based at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, and he and Frenk joined their institutions with other computational astronomers to form the Virgo Consortium.[6][d] This gave Frenk and his team access to the supercomputing centre of the Max Planck Society in Garching, regarded as among the best facilities in the world.[6]
By the mid-1990s, the cold dark matter model had become widely accepted, and predictions of cosmological simulations shifted from the distribution of cold dark matter halos to the shapes of those halos.[15]
In 1996 and 1997, Frenk, White, and lead authorJulio Navarro of the University of Arizona published results based on their analysis of halos from cold dark matter simulations.[15] This collaboration produced the Navarro-Frenk-White profile, a model profile for dark matter halos. The model describes the spatial mass distribution of dark matter within a halo. It remains a widely used standard in the study of dark matter and galaxy formation.[15]
In 2005, as a member of the Virgo Consortium, Frenk was part of a team that produced the Millennium Run. At the time, this was the largest and most realistic cosmological N-body simulation ever, and took 28 days to run.[19][6] In a later interview, Frenk summarised his cosmological simulation work as "cosmic cookery" because it depended on selecting just the right "ingredients", putting them into a computer, and letting them "cook".[20] He remarked that he and his colleagues at the ICC had "filing cabinets" full of failed universes.[20]
By 2008, Frenk was one of the top 10 most-cited astronomers in the world.[6] In 2020, he was named a Clarivate Citation Laureate for his highly-cited research, which was judged to be of "Nobel Class".[21] Along with Julio Navarro and Simon White, he was named a potential winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics, though victory at a later date was considered more likely.[22][f] In 2021, the trio of Frenk, Navarro and White was again named as a strong contender for that year's Nobel.[23][g]
Personal life
Frenk is married to Dr. Susan Frenk, a lecturer in Spanish and Latin American literature and current Principal of St Aidan's College. They have two sons.[13]
Frenk has an interest in architecture, which was inspired by his experience studying at the main campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, a UNESCO World Heritage site.[25] He was unimpressed with the state of academic buildings when he first moved to Britain, describing them as "dark, claustrophobic and in a state of disrepair" and has taken an active role in the design process of new buildings at Durham University.[25]
Frenk made his television debut in 1986 on an episode of the Australian series Beyond 2000. He has made numerous appearances since then, and by his estimation, has taken part in 32 television programmes for the BBC, including The Sky at Night.[2] He has also appeared on BBC Radio on multiple occasions and was interviewed by Kirsty Young for Desert Island Discs, first broadcast in 2018.[5]
References
Notes
↑ In layman terms, dark matter is a hypothetical material said to make up 85% of space matter. Dark matter theory emerged as an explanation for why, contrary to Newtonian physics, almost all stars in a spiral galaxy race around the centre at the same speed, rather than moving more slowly the closer to the edge. This observation was first made by Vera Rubin.[8]
↑ Entitled The evolution of large-scale structure in a universe dominated by cold dark matter
↑ By 2006, despite the popularity of Milgrom's idea in some quarters, dark matter had the backing of the "vast majority" of scientists.[8]
↑ As of 2018, Frenk continued to serve on the steering committee of the Virgo Consortium.[16]
↑ Ogden had previously studied Physics at Durham before entering the business world.[6]
↑ This was because the award the previous year (to a team led by Princeton astrophysicist Jim Peebles) had also been for work that was within the realm of space science[22]
1 2 Dennis Overbye (1992). Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos: The Scientific Quest for the Secret of the Universe. New York: Harper Perennial. p.333. ISBN9780060922719.
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