Amina Helmi
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Amina Helmi (born October 6, 1970 in Bahía Blanca , Argentina ) is an Argentine-Dutch astronomer.
Helmi received her master's degree in astronomy from the University of La Plata in 1994 and her PhD in astronomy with Tim de Zeeuw and SDM White at Leiden University in 2000 . In 2004 she received the Christiaan Huygens Prize for her dissertation ( The formation of the galactic halo ). As a post-doctoral student she was in Argentina at the University of La Plata and at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics and then at the Astronomical Institute of the University of Utrecht (as a NOVA Fellow). In 2003 she became a professor at the Kapteyn Institute of the University of Groningen .
She deals with the evolution and dynamics of galaxies, which she researches in particular in the Milky Way (as the Rosetta Stone of the Galaxy Evolution ) and neighboring galaxies (Local Group). She tries to uncover the formation of the Milky Way and its satellite galaxies ( galactic archeology ) and also investigated the distribution of dark matter in the Milky Way and its surroundings. She draws evidence of this from the location and movement of the stars in the Milky Way (observations from the Gaia mission, in which she was involved from the start, and in particular from the data analysis team of Gaia DR2) and the chemical composition of her stars. The Helmi stellar current is named after her, the remains of a dwarf galaxy absorbed by the Milky Way. It was discovered in 1999 by Helmi and colleagues from Hipparcos data.
In 2018 she published evidence of the formation of the Milky Way from a merger with another galaxy (Gaia-Enceladus) 10 billion years ago, which provided most of the stars of the halo and contributed to the formation of the thick disk.
In 2003 she received a Dutch VIDI grant from the NWO (and in 2015 a VICI grant from the NWO) and an ERC Starting Grant in 2009. From 2007 to 2012 she was a member of the Young Academy of the Dutch Academy of Sciences, of which she has been a member since 2017. In 2016 she became a member of the Koninklijke Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen (KHMW). In 2010 she received the Pastoor Schmeits Prize with Joop Schaye. In 2013 the asteroid (183635) Helmi was named after her. For 2019 she received the Spinoza Prize .
She is an Argentine and Dutch citizen.
Fonts
- with Simon DM White, P. Tim de Zeeuw, HongSheng Zhao: Debris streams in the solar neighborhood as relicts from the formation of the Milky Way, Nature , Volume 402, 1999, pp. 53-55.
- with D. Massari u. a .: Three-dimensional motions in the Sculptor dwarf galaxy as a glimpse of a new era, Nature Astronomy , Volume 2, 2018, pp. 156–161
- with T. Antoja u. a .: A dynamically young and perturbed Milky Way disk, Nature , Volume 561, 2018, pp. 360-362
- with Anthony GA Brown a. a .: The merger that led to the formation of the Milky Way inner stellar halo and thick disk, Nature , Volume 563, 2018, pp. 85-88
Web links
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Helmi, Amina |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Argentine-Dutch astronomer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 6, 1970 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Bahía Blanca , Argentina |