Malcolm Sim Longair

Malcolm Sim Longair

Malcolm Sim Longair (born May 18, 1941 in Dundee , Scotland ) is a British radio astronomer , astrophysicist and cosmologist.

Longair studied at the University of St. Andrews (Queen's College Dundee) with a degree in electronics and physics in 1963 and then was in the radio astronomy group of Cambridge University ( Cavendish Laboratory ), where he received his doctorate in 1967. During this time he was Exhibition of 1851 Fellow and from 1967 Fellow of Clare Hall College, Cambridge. As a post-doctoral student he was at the Lebedew Institute in Moscow with Jakow Borissowitsch Seldowitsch and Vitali Lasarewitsch Ginsburg . 1980 to 1990 he was Astronomer Royal for Scotland and was at the same time Regius Professor of Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh and Director of the Royal Observatory Edinburgh . From 1997 to 2005 he was Jacksonian Professor of Natural Philosophy at Cambridge University in England and head of the Cavendish Laboratory sm , of which he was deputy head from 1991, responsible for teaching. He is Professorial Fellow and Vice President of Clare Hall College.

He was visiting professor at Caltech in 1972 , at the Institute for Advanced Study in 1978 , visiting scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in 1990 and at the Space Telescope Science Institute in 1997 . In 1995 he was a Selby Fellow of the Australian Academy of Sciences. He was chairman of the initiative to establish the Gemini Observatory in 1994/95 and chairman of the scientific advisory board of the Space Telescope Science Institute in 1995/96.

His research interests are high energy astrophysics and cosmology. He dealt with radio emission of dust from distant areas of the universe , observational cosmology , galaxy formations and gravitational lenses . He is known for several books and reviews, especially on astrophysics and cosmology.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Edinburgh and CBE (2000). Since 1990 he has been a member of the Academia Europaea . In 1990 he gave the prestigious Christmas Lecture of the Royal Institution (Origins of the Universe). In 1991/92 he was President of the Physics Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

Fonts

• Theoretical Concepts in Physics, An Alternative View of Theoretical Reasoning in Physics. Cambridge University Press, 1984, 2nd edition 2003
  • German translation: Theoretical Concepts of Physics. An alternative view, Springer 1991
• High Energy Astrophysics, Volume 1: Particles, Photons and their Detection, 3rd edition, Cambridge University Press 2011, Volume 2, Stars, the Galaxy and the Interstellar Medium, 2nd edition 1994
• The Cosmic Century: A History of Astrophysics and Cosmology, Cambridge University Press, 2006, reprinted as paperback 2013
• Our Evolving Universe, 2nd Edition, Cambridge University Press, 1996.
  • German translation: The declared universe, Springer 1998
• Galaxy Formation, Springer 2008
• Quantum Concepts in Physics: An Alternative Approach to the Understanding of Quantum Mechanics, Cambridge University Press 2013
• The New Astrophysics, in Paul Davies (Ed.), The New Physics, Cambridge University Press 1989, pp. 95-208

Web links

• Homepage at the Cavendish Laboratory
• Literature by and about Malcolm Sim Longair in the catalog of the German National Library