 |
Guinevere Kauffmann | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1968 |
| Alma mater | University of Cambridge |
| Spouse | Simon White |
| Awards | Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize (2007) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Astrophysics |
| Institutions | MPI for Extraterrestrial Physics, MPI for Astrophysics |
Guinevere Alice Mei-Ing Kauffmann was born in California. She is an astrophysicist and is known for her work studying galaxies among other subjects.
Kauffmann obtained a B.Sc.(Hons) in applied mathematics at the University of Cape Town in 1988 and an M.Sc. in astronomy in 1990. She obtained her Ph.D. in astronomy at the University of Cambridge in 1993, working with Simon White, whom she later married.
She was a member of the Miller Research Fellows program at the University of California, Berkeley, and was then employed as a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics and the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, both in Garching, Germany. She became head of a research team at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in 2003. In 2013, she was appointed a Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society and Director (currently one of four) at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics. [1]
Her research interests include models of galaxy formation; analysis of observed properties of galaxies, including their atomic and molecular gas; active galactic nuclei; and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and other large spectroscopic surveys of galaxies. [2]
From 2004 to 2008 Kauffmann coordinated "Multi-wavelength Analysis of Galaxy Populations" (MAGPOP) a Marie Curie Research Training Network of the European Union that brought together researchers from all over Europe for interdisciplinary projects. [3]
In February 2018, the German news magazine Spiegel Online published an article about abuse of power by senior scientists at the MPI for Astrophysics. [9] Several emails obtained by BuzzFeed News Germany revealed in June 2018 that the allegations concerned MPA director Guinevere Kauffmann, who was accused of harassing and bullying students and scientists for years. [10] [11] [12] Leaked emails published by BuzzFeed News Germany also include what has been described as racist, sexist and homophobic statements directed at employees and students. Responding to questions by the journal Nature, Kauffmann denied the accusations of racism, sexism and homophobia, claiming that she is merely interested in cultural differences between people and Buzzfeed had made severe errors. She conceded that as a student she was subject to "very high pressure supervision", acknowledging however that such a mentoring style "has now become unacceptable" and claiming to have changed her behavior substantially after complaints were received. [13] This and other cases [14] sparked a general debate about the abuse of power in science. [15] [16]
In August 2018, Science Magazine, as part of a longer article about bullying at a different Max Planck Institute, reported allegations of bullying and sexual harassment at the MPI for Astrophysics noting that Kauffmann had been accused of bullying, was receiving coaching and daily monitoring, and had been given a drastically reduced group to lead. In an interview with the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the president of the Max Planck Society admitted that these scandals had shown deficiencies in and the need for improvement of the Society's procedures for dealing with complaints. [17]
The study of galaxy formation and evolution is concerned with the processes that formed a heterogeneous universe from a homogeneous beginning, the formation of the first galaxies, the way galaxies change over time, and the processes that have generated the variety of structures observed in nearby galaxies. Galaxy formation is hypothesized to occur from structure formation theories, as a result of tiny quantum fluctuations in the aftermath of the Big Bang. The simplest model in general agreement with observed phenomena is the Lambda-CDM model—that is, that clustering and merging allows galaxies to accumulate mass, determining both their shape and structure. Hydrodynamics simulation, which simulates both baryons and dark matter, is widely used to study galaxy formation and evolution.
The Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT), located near Narayangaon, Pune in India, is an array of thirty fully steerable parabolic radio telescopes of 45 metre diameter, observing at metre wavelengths. It is the largest and most sensitive radio telescope array in the world at low frequencies. It is operated by the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA), a part of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai. It was conceived and built under the direction of Govind Swarup during 1984 to 1996. It is an interferometric array with baselines of up to 25 kilometres (16 mi). It was recently upgraded with new receivers, after which it is also known as the upgraded Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (uGMRT).
Simon David Manton White, FRS, is a British astrophysicist. He was one of directors at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics before his retirement in late 2019.
Catherine Heymans is a British astrophysicist, the Astronomer Royal for Scotland, and a professor at the University of Edinburgh based at the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh.
The Illustris project is an ongoing series of astrophysical simulations run by an international collaboration of scientists. The aim was to study the processes of galaxy formation and evolution in the universe with a comprehensive physical model. Early results were described in a number of publications following widespread press coverage. The project publicly released all data produced by the simulations in April, 2015. Key developers of the Illustris simulation have been Volker Springel and Mark Vogelsberger. The Illustris simulation framework and galaxy formation model has been used for a wide range of spin-off projects, starting with Auriga and IllustrisTNG followed by Thesan (2021), MillenniumTNG (2022) and TNG-Cluster.
PSR J2124−3358 is a millisecond pulsar located in the constellation Microscopium. It is one of the brightest examples of its type in the X-ray spectrum. Discovered in 1997, no optical component was observed in 2003.
The KBC Void is an immense, comparatively empty region of space, named after astronomers Ryan Keenan, Amy Barger, and Lennox Cowie, who studied it in 2013. The existence of a local underdensity has been the subject of many pieces of literature and research articles.
Alan R. Duffy is a British and Australian professional astronomer and science communicator. He was born in England, raised in Northern Ireland, and is currently based in Australia. He is a professor at the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing at Swinburne University of Technology, and is the Lead Scientist at the Royal Institution of Australia.
Benedetta Ciardi is an Italian astrophysicist.
NGC 4596 is a barred lenticular galaxy located about 55 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo. NGC 4596 was discovered by astronomer William Herschel on March 15, 1784. NGC 4596 is a member of the Virgo Cluster and has an inclination of about 38°.
NGC 4709 is an elliptical galaxy located in the constellation Centaurus. It is considered to be a member of the Centaurus Cluster and is the dominant member of a small group of galaxies known as "Cen 45" which is currently merging with the main Centaurus Cluster even though the two subclusters' line of sight redshift velocities differ by about 1500 km/s. NGC 4709 was discovered by astronomer James Dunlop on May 7, 1826.
Red nuggets is the nickname given to rare, unusually small galaxies packed with large amounts of red stars that were originally observed by Hubble Space Telescope in 2005 in the young universe. They are ancient remnants of the first massive galaxies. The environments of red nuggets are usually consistent with the general elliptical galaxy population. Most red nuggets have merged with other galaxies, but some managed to stay unscathed.
NGC 1281 is a compact elliptical galaxy located about 200 million light-years away in the constellation Perseus. NGC 1281 was discovered by astronomer John Dreyer on December 12, 1876. It is a member of the Perseus Cluster.
Claudia Maraston is a Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Portsmouth. She designs models for the calculation of spectro-photometric evolution of stellar populations. She is the winner of the 2018 Royal Astronomical Society Eddington Medal.
NGC 4313 is an edge-on spiral galaxy located about 50 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo. It was discovered by astronomer William Herschel on March 15, 1784. NGC 4313 is a member of the Virgo Cluster and is classified as LINER and as a Seyfert galaxy.
An HII galaxy is a very luminous dwarf starburst galaxy. Generally, HII galaxies have a low metallicity and high percentage of neutral hydrogen. There is generally believed to be a relationship between luminosity and disturbed morphology, suggesting that the starburst activity in the galaxy is caused by tidal interactions. The distribution of luminosities tends to cluster around two different extremes: those with a high luminosity and highly disturbed morphology, and those with a low luminosity and fairly regular and symmetric morphology. Those with high luminosities are labelled by some as type I HII galaxies and those with lower luminosities as type II HII galaxies. There is also a general correlation between metallicity and mass of the galaxies. The name of HII galaxies comes from their spectroscopic properties which are more or less indistinguishable from that of HII regions.
The Widefield ASKAP L-band Legacy All-sky Blind surveY (WALLABY) is a next-generation survey of the 21 cm radio emission from neutral hydrogen (HI) in the Local Universe. It is hosted by the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope, WALLABY will survey three-quarters of the sky over a Declination range −90° to +30° to a redshift of 0.26. It will have a angular resolution of 30 arcsec and a sensitivity of 1.6 mJy/beam in each 4 km/s channel. WALLABY is expected to detect about 500,000 galaxies with a mean redshift of 0.05, at a mean distance of about 200 Mpc. The scientific goals of WALLABY include:
NGC 4393 is a spiral galaxy about 46 million light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices. It was discovered by astronomer William Herschel on April 11, 1785. It is a member of the NGC 4274 Group, which is part of the Coma I Group or Cloud.
Rosemary Theresa Coogan is an astrophysicist from Northern Ireland. Her research considers galaxy evolution and space-based telescopes. She was selected as a member of the 2022 European Space Agency Astronaut Group.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
