Michael (Mike) Garrett FRS (born 1964) is a Scottish astronomer. He has been the Director of Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics [1] since September 2016. [2] He was previously the General Director of ASTRON, part of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research. [3]
He was born in Kilwinning, North Ayrshire, Scotland, and brought up in nearby Saltcoats, on the west coast.[ citation needed ]
He went to St. Mary's (1969–1976) and St. Andrew's RC schools (1976–1982). He graduated with first-class honours at the University of Glasgow (1982–1986). He studied for his PhD at Jodrell Bank Observatory, University of Manchester (1986–1990), supervised by Dennis Walsh.[ citation needed ]
Garrett started work at the Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe (JIVE) in 1996, working on support for the European VLBI Network. He became the director of JIVE in 2003, and over the course of his four-year tenure the number of employees at the institute doubled from 20 to 40. [4] On 1 February 2007 he became the General Director of ASTRON, part of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research. [3] [4] He was one of 14 winners of the 2013 IBM Faculty Award. [5] He became the inaugural Sir Bernard Lovell Chair of Astrophysics and the Director of Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics in September 2016. [1] [2]
He was elected a member of the Academia Europaea in 2021 [6] and a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2024. [7]
Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire, England hosts a number of radio telescopes as part of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester. The observatory was established in 1945 by Bernard Lovell, a radio astronomer at the university, to investigate cosmic rays after his work on radar in the Second World War. It has since played an important role in the research of meteoroids, quasars, pulsars, masers, and gravitational lenses, and was heavily involved with the tracking of space probes at the start of the Space Age.
Very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI) is a type of astronomical interferometry used in radio astronomy. In VLBI a signal from an astronomical radio source, such as a quasar, is collected at multiple radio telescopes on Earth or in space. The distance between the radio telescopes is then calculated using the time difference between the arrivals of the radio signal at different telescopes. This allows observations of an object that are made simultaneously by many radio telescopes to be combined, emulating a telescope with a size equal to the maximum separation between the telescopes.
Sir Alfred Charles Bernard Lovell was an English physicist and radio astronomer. He was the first director of Jodrell Bank Observatory, from 1945 to 1980.
Saltcoats is a town on the west coast of North Ayrshire, Scotland. The name is derived from the town's earliest industry when salt was harvested from the sea water of the Firth of Clyde, carried out in small cottages along the shore. It is part of the 'Three Towns' conurbation along with Ardrossan and Stevenston and is the third largest town in North Ayrshire.
The Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network (MERLIN) is an interferometer array of radio telescopes spread across England. The array is run from Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire by the University of Manchester on behalf of UK Research and Innovation.
The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is an intergovernmental international radio telescope project being built in Australia (low-frequency) and South Africa (mid-frequency). The combining infrastructure, the Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO), and headquarters, are located at the Jodrell Bank Observatory in the United Kingdom. The SKA cores are being built in the southern hemisphere, where the view of the Milky Way galaxy is the best and radio interference is at its least.
The Joint Institute for Very Long Baseline Interferometry European Research Infrastructure Consortium (JIVE) was established by a decision of the European Commission in December 2014, and assumed the activities and responsibilities of the JIVE foundation, which was established in December 1993. JIVE's mandate is to support the operations and users of the European VLBI Network (EVN), in the widest sense.
The European VLBI Network (EVN) is a network of radio telescopes located primarily in Europe and Asia, with additional antennas in South Africa and Puerto Rico, which performs very high angular resolution observations of cosmic radio sources using very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI). The EVN is the most sensitive VLBI array in the world, and the only one capable of real-time observations. The Joint Institute for VLBI ERIC (JIVE) acts as the central organisation in the EVN, providing both scientific user support and a correlator facility. Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) achieves ultra-high angular resolution and is a multi-disciplinary technique used in astronomy, geodesy and astrometry.
Sir Henry Charles Husband, often known as H. C. Husband, was a leading British civil and consulting engineer from Sheffield, England, who designed bridges and other major civil engineering works. He is particularly known for his work on the Jodrell Bank radio telescopes; the first of these was the largest fully steerable radio telescope in the world on its completion in 1957. Other projects he was involved in designing include the Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station's aerials, one of the earliest telecobalt radiotherapy units, Sri Lanka's tallest building, and the rebuilding of Robert Stephenson's Britannia Bridge after a fire. He won the Royal Society's Royal Medal and the Wilhelm Exner Medal.
The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of Humanities, Letters, Law, and Sciences. The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of European interests in national research agencies.
The Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester, is among the largest astrophysics groups in the UK. It includes the Jodrell Bank Observatory, the MERLIN/VLBI National Facility, and the Jodrell Bank Visitor Centre. The centre was formed after the merger of the Victoria University of Manchester and UMIST which brought two astronomy groups together. The Jodrell Bank site also hosts the headquarters of the SKA Observatory (SKAO) - the International Governmental Organisation (IGO) tasked with the delivery and operation of the Square Kilometre Array, created on the signing of the Rome Convention in 2019. The SKA will be the largest telescope in the world - construction is expected to start at the end of this decade.
Sir Konstantin Sergeevich Novoselov is a Russian–British physicist. His work on graphene with Andre Geim earned them the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010. Novoselov is a professor at the Centre for Advanced 2D Materials, National University of Singapore and is also the Langworthy Professor of the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester.
Lisa Harvey-Smith is a British-Australian astrophysicist, Australia's Women in STEM Ambassador and a Professor of Practice in Science Communication at the University of NSW. Her research interests include the origin and evolution of cosmic magnetism, supernova remnants, the interstellar medium, massive star formation and astrophysical masers. For almost a decade Harvey-Smith was a research scientist at Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), including several years as the Project Scientist for the Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder and later Project Scientist for the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) Telescope.
Heino Falcke is a German professor of radio astronomy and astroparticle physics at the Radboud University Nijmegen (Netherlands). His main field of study is black holes, and he is the originator of the concept of the 'black hole shadow'. In 2019, Falcke announced the first Event Horizon Telescope results at the EHT Press Conference in Brussels.
Balthassar Jozef Paul "Bas" van Bavel is a Dutch historian. He has held the chair of Transitions of Economy and Society at Utrecht University since 2011, and has been professor of Economic and Social History since 2007. His research has mostly focused on pre-industrial Northwestern Europe. He was one of the winners of the 2019 Spinoza Prize, the highest award in Dutch science.
Richard John Davis, OBE, FRAS was a radio astronomer for the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester.
Johannes Alphonsus Marie "Johan" Bleeker is a Dutch space research and technology scientist. He was director of the Netherlands Institute for Space Research from 1983 to 2003. He was involved in the setting up of the Horizon 2000 and Horizon 2000+ long term space science programs of the European Space Agency.
René Bernards is a Dutch cancer researcher. He is professor of molecular carcinogenesis at Utrecht University and head of the section of molecular carcinogenesis at the Netherlands Cancer Institute-Antoni van Leeuwenhoekziekenhuis. Bernards is a winner of the 2005 Spinoza Prize.
Anna Margaret Mahala Scaife is a Professor of Radio Astronomy at the University of Manchester and Head of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics Interferometry Centre of Excellence. She is the co-director of Policy@Manchester. She was awarded the 2019 Royal Astronomical Society Jackson-Gwilt Medal in recognition of her contributions to astrophysical instrumentation.
Johann Anton Zensus is a German radio astronomer. He is director at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) and honorary professor at the University of Cologne. He is chairman of the collaboration board of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). The collaboration announced the first image of a black hole in April 2019.