George K. Miley

George Kildare Miley (born March 15, 1942 in Dublin ) is an Irish-Dutch astronomer. He was a professor at the University of Leiden and was director of the Leiden observatory from 1996 to 2003 .

Miley from 1959 studied physics at University College Dublin with a bachelor's degree in 1963 and 2 received his doctorate in 1968 at the University of Manchester in radio astronomy . At that time he was working at the Jodrell Bank Observatory (Nuffield Radio Astronomy Observatory) on the development of high-resolution interferometry (Long Baseline Interferometry) and researched on quasars . He spent two years (until 1970) as a post-doctoral student at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), where he established a relationship between the apparent size and distance of quasars, and then at the Leiden Observatory. There he worked on the newly completed Westerbork synthesis radio telescope in Westerbork . In collaboration with Harry van der Laan , he studied radio galaxies and Cygnus X-1 there . In 1988 he became professor for astronomy in Leiden and was academy professor at the Dutch Academy of Sciences from 2003 to 2008.

1977/78 he was visiting professor at the Lick Observatory , where he switched from radio astronomy to other wavelengths (optical and infrared), and 1981/82 visiting scientist for the infrared satellite IRAS at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory . From 1984 to 1988 he was Senior Astronomer and Head of Academic Affairs at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore and Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins University .

He investigated in the infrared (and in the optical) galaxies very distant with high redshifts and the gas in the vicinity of radio galaxies and thus the development of radio galaxies. He later showed in Leiden that bright radio galaxies can be used as a means of locating the first galaxy clusters. In 1997 he proposed the Low Frequency Array , a radio telescope with which one can look into the universe even earlier. It was completed in 2012.

From 2006 to 2012 he was Vice President of the International Astronomical Union . There he was responsible for a program to train astronomers in developing countries. He is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences. The asteroid (6202) Georgemiley was named after him in 1996. He is a knight of the Order of the Dutch Lion. In 2013 he became an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. In 1997 he received the Shell Oeuvre Prize.

Web links

• Associated Universities Inc.
• Website at the IAU
• Symposium in his honor, Leiden Observatory 2013, with biography

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Minor Planet Circ. 26765