Chris Lintott

Last updated

Chris Lintott
FRAS
Jodcast live 2016 006.jpg
Chris Lintott at Jodcast Live 2016, at Jodrell Bank Observatory, UK.
Born
Christopher John Lintott

(1980-11-26) 26 November 1980 (age 43)
Torbay, Devon, England
CitizenshipBritish
Education Torquay Boys' Grammar School
Alma mater
Known for
Awards
Scientific career
Institutions
Thesis Analyses of the early stages of star formation  (2006)
Doctoral advisor
Doctoral students Becky Smethurst
Website Official website

Christopher John Lintott FRAS (born 26 November 1980) [3] [4] is a British astrophysicist, author and broadcaster. He is a Professor of Astrophysics in the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford, [5] [6] [7] and, since 2023, Gresham Professor of Astronomy at Gresham College, London. [8] Lintott is involved in a number of popular science projects aimed at bringing astronomy to a wider audience and is also the primary presenter of the BBC television series The Sky at Night , having previously been co-presenter with Patrick Moore until Moore's death in 2012. He co-authored Bang! – The Complete History of the Universe and The Cosmic Tourist with Moore and Queen guitarist and astrophysicist Brian May. [9] [10] [11]

Contents

Education

Lintott attended Torquay Boys' Grammar School in Devon. In 1999, while still at school, he won a $500 Earth and Space Sciences award and the Priscilla and Bart Bok Honorable Mention Award at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair for an article on 'Cosmic dust around young stellar objects'.[ citation needed ] This came from a six-week project at the University of Hertfordshire funded by a Nuffield bursary. He read Natural Sciences at Magdalene College, Cambridge and in 2006 received a PhD in astrophysics from University College London, for his thesis on the early stages of star formation, supervised by Ofer Lahav. [12]

Research and career

As of 2017 Lintott is co-director of the Programme on Computational Cosmology and Citizen Science Project Lead in the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford, [7] [13] and a Research Fellow at New College, Oxford. [14] He was the Director of Citizen Science Initiatives at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago from 2010 until 2012. [15]

His research focuses on galaxy evolution and the application of astrochemical models of star formation to galaxies beyond the Milky Way; particularly the use of sulphur compounds as a signature of stars that are in the process of formation. [16] [17] [18] After a recommendation from Ed Vaizey, former Culture Minister, Prime Minister David Cameron appointed Lintott as Astronomy Trustee of the National Maritime Museum (NMM). His appointment ran from 24 June 2010 until 23 June 2014. [19]

Lintott's research has been published in a wide variety of peer-reviewed scientific journals. [7] [17] [18] [20] [21] He was a Fulford junior research fellow at Somerville College, Oxford between 2006 and 2010. [16] [19]

Lintott's research has been funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). [22]

The Sky at Night

Lintott first appeared on the BBC astronomy programme The Sky at Night, presented by Patrick Moore, as a guest in 2000. As Moore's mobility deteriorated, Lintott acquired an increasingly prominent role, often providing on-location reporting from events covered by the programme. In an interview in 2007 with Mark Lawson, Moore described him as "eminently suitable" as a presenter. [23] He jointly presented the programme with Moore until the latter's death in December 2012. Since the February 2013 episode, Chris Lintott has been a co-presenter with Lucie Green (until December 2013) and with Maggie Aderin-Pocock (since February 2014). In July 2004, Moore suffered a near-fatal bout of food poisoning and Lintott stood in as the sole presenter of that month's episode. [24] It was the only episode which Moore did not present since the show was first broadcast on 24 April 1957 until his death. [25]

Galaxy Zoo and The Zooniverse

Chris Lintott is the co-founder, along with Kevin Schawinski, of Galaxy Zoo, an online crowdsourcing project where members of the public can volunteer their time to assist in classifying over a million galaxies.(e.g. [1] [26] [27] [28] [29] ) Lintott stated when commenting on GZ: "One advantage is that you get to see parts of space that have never been seen before. These images were taken by a robotic telescope and processed automatically, so the odds are that when you log on, that first galaxy you see will be one that no human has seen before." [30] This was confirmed by Schawinski: "Most of these galaxies have been photographed by a robotic telescope, and then processed by computer. So this is the first time they will have been seen by human eyes." [31]

Lintott was the principal investigator (P.I.) of the Zooniverse citizen science platform for over 15 years. [32] [33] Quoting from the Zooniverse Team page: "Astronomer and founder of both Galaxy Zoo and the Zooniverse that grew from it, Chris is interested in how galaxies form and evolve, how citizen science can change the world". [32] Lintott is also the chair of the Citizen Science Alliance, the organisation that produces, maintains and develops The Zooniverse. [34]

Books

Lintott after a lecture for the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario in April 2010 Chris Lintott.jpg
Lintott after a lecture for the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario in April 2010

In October 2006, Chris Lintott, Patrick Moore and Brian May co-authored a book entitled Bang! – The Complete History of the Universe, which was produced by Canopus Books and published by Carlton Books on 23 October 2006. [9] It has been translated into 13 languages and has appeared in paperback. As suggested by the title, the illustrated book is a history of the Universe from the Big Bang to its eventual predicted end. It is aimed at a popular science audience and claims to make its subject matter easily comprehensible to readers without any knowledge of astronomy. [35]

In October 2012, Brian May, Patrick Moore and Chris Lintott co-authored a book entitled The Cosmic Tourist: The 100 Most Awe-inspiring Destinations in the Universe. [36] On the book's PR page, it is stated: "Take your seats for the greatest tour ever – one that encompasses no less than the whole of the Universe." [37]

Chris Lintott's book, The Crowd and the Cosmos: Adventures in the Zooniverse was released in 2019. [38]

Awards and honours

Lintott is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. [39] In 2011, Lintott was awarded the Royal Society Kohn Award. He was awarded this (quoting from the Royal Society webpage): "For his excellent engagement with society in matters of science and its societal dimension." [40]

In 2013, Lintott was awarded the Oxford Internet Institute Internet and Society Award. He was given this (quoting from the OII website): "in recognition of Galaxy Zoo's outstanding contributions to research by using crowd-sourced citizen science to capitalise on the availability of online big data-sets." [16] [39]

In 2014, he received the Beatrice M. Tinsley Prize from the American Astronomical Society. He was awarded this (quoting from the AAS website): "For his insight and creativity that created a transformative approach to science by engaging nonscientists in cutting edge research." [41]

In 2015, he won the Institute of Physics Kelvin Medal and Prize. In 2020 he was elected a Legacy Fellow of the American Astronomical Society. [42]

Real Tennis

Lintott is a fan and player of the game of real tennis, where he represents the Oxford University Tennis Club. [43] In 2022, Lintott provided commentary for the broadcast of the 2022 Real Tennis World Championship at Prested Hall in Feering, Essex. [44] In 2023, he also provided commentary for the finals of the 2023 Ladies World Championship. [45]

Bibliography

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open research</span> Research made available to the public

Open research is research that is openly accessible by others. Those who publish research in this way are often concerned with making research more transparent, more collaborative, more wide-reaching, and more efficient. Open research aims to make both research methods and the resulting data freely available, often via the internet, in order to support reproducibility and, potentially, massively distributed research collaboration. In this regard, it is related to both open source software and citizen science.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Galaxy Zoo</span> Crowdsourced astronomy project

Galaxy Zoo is a crowdsourced astronomy project which invites people to assist in the morphological classification of large numbers of galaxies. It is an example of citizen science as it enlists the help of members of the public to help in scientific research.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Galaxy color–magnitude diagram</span> Chart depicting the relationship between brightness and mass of large star systems

The galaxy color–magnitude diagram shows the relationship between absolute magnitude and mass of galaxies. A preliminary description of the three areas of this diagram was made in 2003 by Eric F. Bell et al. from the COMBO-17 survey that clarified the bimodal distribution of red and blue galaxies as seen in the analysis of Sloan Digital Sky Survey data and even in de Vaucouleurs's 1961 analyses of galaxy morphology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pamela L. Gay</span> American astronomer (born 1973)

Pamela L. Gay is an American astronomer, educator, podcaster, and writer, best known for her work in astronomical podcasting and citizen science astronomy projects. She is a senior education and communication specialist and senior scientist for the Planetary Science Institute. Her research interests include analysis of astronomy data, as well as examination of the impact of citizen science initiatives. Gay has also appeared as herself in various television documentary series.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hanny's Voorwerp</span> Astronomical object appearing as a bright blob, discovered by Hanny van Arkel

Hanny's Voorwerp is a type of astronomical object called a quasar ionization echo. It was discovered in 2007 by Dutch schoolteacher Hanny van Arkel while she was participating as a volunteer in the Galaxy Zoo project, part of the Zooniverse group of citizen science websites. Photographically, it appears as a bright blob close to spiral galaxy IC 2497 in the constellation Leo Minor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pea galaxy</span> Possible type of luminous blue compact galaxy

A Pea galaxy, also referred to as a Pea or Green Pea, might be a type of luminous blue compact galaxy that is undergoing very high rates of star formation. Pea galaxies are so-named because of their small size and greenish appearance in the images taken by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steady-state model</span> Model of the universe – alternative to the Big Bang model

In cosmology, the steady-state model or steady state theory is an alternative to the Big Bang theory. In the steady-state model, the density of matter in the expanding universe remains unchanged due to a continuous creation of matter, thus adhering to the perfect cosmological principle, a principle that says that the observable universe is always the same at any time and any place.

George Petros Efstathiou is a British astrophysicist who is Professor of Astrophysics (1909) at the University of Cambridge and was the first director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmology at the University of Cambridge from 2008 to 2016. He was previously Savilian Professor of Astronomy at the University of Oxford.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zooniverse</span> Citizen science platform

Zooniverse is a citizen science web portal owned and operated by the Citizen Science Alliance. It is home to some of the Internet's largest, most popular and most successful citizen science projects. The organization grew from the original Galaxy Zoo project and now hosts dozens of projects which allow volunteers to participate in crowdsourced scientific research. It has headquarters at Oxford University and the Adler Planetarium. Unlike many early internet-based citizen science projects which used spare computer processing power to analyse data, known as volunteer computing, Zooniverse projects require the active participation of human volunteers to complete research tasks. Projects have been drawn from disciplines including astronomy, ecology, cell biology, humanities, and climate science.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Astroinformatics</span> Interdisciplinary field of study

Astroinformatics is an interdisciplinary field of study involving the combination of astronomy, data science, machine learning, informatics, and information/communications technologies. The field is closely related to astrostatistics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Milky Way Project</span>

The Milky Way Project is a Zooniverse project whose main goal is to identify stellar-wind bubbles in the Milky Way Galaxy. Users classify sets of infrared images from the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). Scientists believe bubbles in these images are the result of young, massive stars whose light causes shocks in interstellar gas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Green bean galaxy</span> Very rare astronomical objects that are thought to be quasar ionization echos

Green bean galaxies (GBGs) are very rare astronomical objects that are thought to be quasar ionization echos. They were discovered by Mischa Schirmer and colleagues R. Diaz, K. Holhjem, N.A. Levenson, and C. Winge. The authors report the discovery of a sample of Seyfert-2 galaxies with ultra-luminous galaxy-wide narrow-line regions (NLRs) at redshifts z=0.2-0.6.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Disk Detective</span> NASA-citizen science project

Disk Detective is the first NASA-led and funded-collaboration project with Zooniverse. It is NASA's largest crowdsourcing citizen science project aiming at engaging the general public in search of stars, which are surrounded by dust-rich circumstellar disks, where planets usually dwell and are formed. Initially launched by NASA Citizen Science Officer, Marc Kuchner, the principal investigation of the project was turned over to Steven Silverberg.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kevin Schawinski</span> Swiss astrophysicist

Kevin Schawinski is a Swiss astrophysicist. He was a professor at ETH Zurich in Zürich.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alex Szalay</span> Astrophysicist, researcher (born 1949)

Alex Szalay is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of physics and astronomy and computer science at the Johns Hopkins University School of Arts and Sciences and Whiting School of Engineering. Szalay is an international leader in astronomy, cosmology, the science of big data, and data-intensive computing. In 2023, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Radio Galaxy Zoo</span> Citizen science project

Radio Galaxy Zoo (RGZ) is an internet crowdsourced citizen science project that seeks to locate supermassive black holes in distant galaxies. It is hosted by the web portal Zooniverse. The scientific team want to identify black hole/jet pairs and associate them with the host galaxies. Using a large number of classifications provided by citizen scientists they hope to build a more complete picture of black holes at various stages and their origin. It was initiated in 2010 by Ray Norris in collaboration with the Zooniverse team, and was driven by the need to cross-identify the millions of extragalactic radio sources that will be discovered by the forthcoming Evolutionary Map of the Universe survey. RGZ is now led by scientists Julie Banfield and Ivy Wong. RGZ started operations on 17 December 2013, and ceased collecting new classifications on 1 May 2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Teacup galaxy</span> Low redshift quasar in the constellation Boötes

The Teacup galaxy, also known as the Teacup AGN or SDSS J1430+1339 is a low redshift type 2 quasar, showing an extended loop of ionized gas resembling a handle of a teacup, which was discovered by volunteers of the Galaxy Zoo project and labeled as a Voorwerpje.

In astronomy, quenching is the process in which star formation shuts down in a galaxy. A galaxy that has been quenched is called a quiescent galaxy. Several possible astrophysical mechanisms have been proposed that could lead to quenching, which either result in a lack of cold molecular gas, or a decrease in how efficiently stars can form from molecular gas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Becky Smethurst</span> British astrophysicist

Rebecca Smethurst, also known as Dr. Becky, is a British astrophysicist, author, and YouTuber who is a Royal Astronomical Society Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. She was the recipient of the 2020 Caroline Herschel Prize Lectureship, awarded by the Royal Astronomical Society, as well as the 2020 Mary Somerville Medal and Prize, awarded by the Institute of Physics. In 2022, she won the Royal Astronomical Society's Winton Award "for research by a post-doctoral fellow in Astronomy whose career has shown the most promising development".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gems of the Galaxy Zoos</span>

Gems of the Galaxy Zoos (Zoogems) was a gap-filler project which used the Hubble Space Telescope to take images of unusual objects found by volunteers classifying data from both Galaxy Zoo (GZ) and Radio Galaxy Zoo (RGZ). Between the HSTs' main observations, there is a short time that objects within that field of view can be imaged using gaps which last approximately 12 - 25 mins. The Zoogems project sought to use those small observation gaps to image 300 candidates taken from the two Zoos in order to better study and comprehend them. Starting observations in May 2018, HST Proposal 15445 had by the end of September 2023 imaged 193 of the 300 candidates with many of them having near 11 minute exposures.

References

  1. 1 2 Lintott, C. J.; Schawinski, K.; Slosar, A. E.; Land, K.; Bamford, S.; Thomas, D.; Raddick, M. J.; Nichol, R. C.; Szalay, A.; Andreescu, D.; Murray, P.; Vandenberg, J. (September 2008). "Galaxy Zoo: Morphologies derived from visual inspection of galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society . 389 (3): 1179–1189. arXiv: 0804.4483 . Bibcode:2008MNRAS.389.1179L. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2966.2008.13689.x . S2CID   15279243.
  2. 1 2 "Chris Lintott". UCL. 12 December 2012. Archived from the original on 20 February 2009. Retrieved 6 October 2014.
  3. ↑ "Meet the Team – Chris Lintott". Daily Zooniverse. 26 November 2013. Retrieved 13 August 2019.
  4. ↑ Al-Khalili, Jim (17 June 2014). "Chris Lintott". The Life Scientific. BBC Radio 4. Retrieved 13 August 2019.
  5. ↑ "Prof Chris Lintott | University of Oxford Department of Physics".
  6. ↑ Schmadel, Lutz D. (2012). Dictionary of Minor Planet Names (6th ed.). Springer. p. 402. ISBN   9783642297182.
  7. 1 2 3 "Chris Lintott profile". University of Oxford. Retrieved 6 October 2014.
  8. ↑ "Chris Lintott appointed Gresham Professor of Astronomy". Gresham College. 22 June 2023. Retrieved 22 August 2023.
  9. 1 2 Bang!: The Complete History of the Universe. Carlton Books Ltd. 2009. ISBN   978-1-84732-336-1.
  10. ↑ Brockes, Emma (19 October 2006). "Friend to the stars". London, UK: Guardian Unlimited Arts. Retrieved 27 November 2006.
  11. ↑ Chris Lintott Podcasts A collection of Lintotts' podcasts from the University of Oxford.
  12. ↑ Lintott, Christopher John (2006). Analyses of the early stages of star formation. discovery.ucl.ac.uk (PhD thesis). University College London. OCLC   926299378. EThOS   uk.bl.ethos.722217.
  13. ↑ "Computational Cosmology". University of Oxford. Retrieved 6 October 2014.
  14. ↑ "Christopher Lintott". New College, Oxford. 2014. Archived from the original on 18 October 2014. Retrieved 14 November 2014.
  15. ↑ "TVO Guests". TVO. 2014. Archived from the original on 15 October 2014. Retrieved 6 October 2014.
  16. 1 2 3 "Chris Lintott Receives Internet and Society Award from the Oxford Internet Institute". University of Oxford. 2013. Archived from the original on 26 October 2014. Retrieved 6 October 2014.
  17. 1 2 Chris Lintott's publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (subscription required)
  18. 1 2 Chris Lintott publications in Google Scholar
  19. 1 2 "National Maritime Museum appointment" (PDF). UK Government. Retrieved 6 October 2014.
  20. ↑ Chris Lintott publications indexed by Microsoft Academic
  21. ↑ "C.J. Lintott ADS citations". SAO/NASA. 6 October 2014. Retrieved 6 October 2014.
  22. ↑ UK Government research grants awarded to Chris Lintott Archived 12 January 2015 at the Wayback Machine , via Research Councils UK, gtr.rcuk.ac.uk; accessed 15 March 2015.
  23. ↑ "Mark Lawson chats to Patrick Moore". BBC. 2007. Retrieved 16 September 2016.
  24. ↑ "A Brief Interview With Sir Patrick Moore". Universe Today. 15 November 2004. Retrieved 22 February 2007.
  25. ↑ "Sir Patrick hit by food poisoning". BBC News. 6 July 2004. Retrieved 22 February 2007.
  26. ↑ S.P. Bamford; R.C. Nichol; I.K. Baldry; K. Land; C.J. Lintott; K. Schawinski; A. Slosar; A.S. Szalay; D. Thomas; M. Torki; D. Andreescu; E.M. Edmondson; C.J. Miller; P. Murray; M.J.Raddick; J. Vandenberg (March 2009). "Galaxy Zoo: the dependence of morphology and colour on environment". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society . 393 (4): 1324–1352. arXiv: 0805.2612 . Bibcode:2009MNRAS.393.1324B. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2966.2008.14252.x . S2CID   18119729.
  27. ↑ R.A. Skibba; S.P. Bamford; R.C. Nichol; C.J. Lintott; D. Andreescu; E.M. Edmondson; P. Murray; M.J. Raddick; K. Schawinski; A. Slosar; A.S. Szalay; D. Thomas; J. Vandenberg (October 2009). "Galaxy Zoo: disentangling the environmental dependence of morphology and colour". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society . 399 (2): 966–982. arXiv: 0811.3970 . Bibcode:2009MNRAS.399..966S. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2966.2009.15334.x . S2CID   49483558.
  28. ↑ K. Schawinski; C.M. Urry; S. Virani; P. Coppi; S.P. Bamford; E. Treister; C.J. Lintott; M. Sarzi; W.C. Keel; S. Kaviraj; C.N. Cardamone; K.L. Masters; N.P. Ross; D. Andreescu; P. Murray; R.C. Nichol; M.J. Raddick; A. Slosar; A.S. Szalay; D. Thomas; J. Vandenberg (March 2010). "Galaxy Zoo: The Fundamentally Different Co-Evolution of Supermassive Black Holes and Their Early- and Late-Type Host Galaxies". The Astrophysical Journal . 711 (1): 284–302. arXiv: 1001.3141 . Bibcode:2010ApJ...711..284S. doi:10.1088/0004-637X/711/1/284. S2CID   17664494.
  29. ↑ C. Lintott; K. Schawinski; S. Bamford; A. Slosar; K. Land; D. Thomas; E. Edmondson; K. Masters; R. Nichol; J. Raddick; A. Szalay; D. Andreescu; P. Murray; J. Vandenberg (January 2011). "Galaxy Zoo 1 : Data Release of Morphological Classifications for nearly 900,000 galaxies". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society . 410 (1): 166–178. arXiv: 1007.3265 . Bibcode:2011MNRAS.410..166L. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2966.2010.17432.x . S2CID   56460191.
  30. ↑ "Scientists seek galaxy hunt help". BBC News. 11 July 2007. Retrieved 16 September 2016.
  31. ↑ M. Hopkin (11 July 2007). "See new galaxies – without leaving your chair". News@nature: news070709–7. doi:10.1038/news070709-7. S2CID   153447885 . Retrieved 16 September 2016.
  32. 1 2 "The Zooniverse Team". The Zooniverse. 2013. Retrieved 6 October 2014.
  33. ↑ chrislintott (6 September 2023). "A note from Chris Lintott". Zooniverse. Retrieved 6 September 2023.
  34. ↑ "Citizen Science Alliance website" . Retrieved 28 September 2014.
  35. ↑ Kennedy, Maev (24 October 2006). "Guitarist joins astronomers to tell history of universe". Guardian Unlimited. Retrieved 7 January 2007.
  36. ↑ B. May; P. Moore; C. Lintott (11 October 2012). The Cosmic Tourist: The 100 Most Awe-inspiring Destinations in the Universe. Carlton Books. ISBN   978-1847326195.
  37. ↑ "The Cosmic Tourist". BangUniverse. 11 October 2012. Retrieved 7 October 2014.
  38. ↑ The Crowd and the Cosmos. Oxford University Press. January 2020. ISBN   9780198842224 . Retrieved 12 February 2020.
  39. 1 2 "An interview of Lintott by Victoria Nash of the OII". November 2013. Archived from the original on 26 October 2014. Retrieved 24 February 2018.
  40. ↑ "Royal Society Kohn Award". The Royal Society. 2011. Retrieved 7 October 2014.
  41. ↑ "Beatrice M. Tinsley Prize". The American Astronomical Society. 2014. Archived from the original on 8 October 2014. Retrieved 7 October 2014.
  42. ↑ "AAS Fellows". AAS. Retrieved 29 September 2020.
  43. ↑ "Brodie Cup 2021/22". Tennis & Rackets Association.
  44. ↑ "2022 Real Tennis World Championship - Day 3". YouTube. 2 October 2022.
  45. ↑ "2023 Ladies World Championship Final". YouTube. T&RA Media. 16 April 2023.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.