Simon White

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Simon White (2012)

Simon David Manton White (born September 30, 1951 in Ashford / Kent ) is a British astrophysicist and Director and Scientific Member at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics .

Life

White studied mathematics (BA 1972) and astronomy at the University of Toronto (M.Sc. 1974) at Jesus College at Cambridge University, and obtained his doctorate in 1977 with Donald Lynden-Bell at Cambridge University on a topic on the large-scale distribution of galaxies in the universe . After several years at the University of California, Berkeley and the Steward Observatory of the University of Arizona , he was appointed Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society and Director of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching in 1994 . White has been a research professor at the University of Arizona since 1992, visiting professor at the University of Durham since 1994 , honorary professor at Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich since 1995, honorary professor at the Astronomical Observatory in Shanghai since 1999 and honorary professor at the Astronomical Observatory in Beijing since 2001 .

White has lived in Munich since 1994 with his wife, the astrophysicist Guinevere Kauffmann , and their son.

Act

White is primarily concerned with the formation of structures in the universe, his work made a significant contribution to the development of the current standard model of the universe, the " model of cold dark matter with cosmological constant " (ΛCDM). As early as his doctorate, he investigated the effects of dark matter on structure formation, and in 1978, together with Martin Rees , he proposed a model that for the first time considered the essential influence of dark matter on the formation of galaxies.

Later he developed computer models for numerical computation, which enabled a direct comparison with the astronomical observations - his most recent project was the Millennium Simulation , which followed the formation of more than 2,000,000 galaxies in a cube-shaped space of more than 2 billion light years edge length. Other much-cited works by White include the areas of stellar dynamics, the detailed structure of nearby galaxies, the formation of galaxies, the structure of their dark halos, the gravitational lensing effect , X-ray observations of galaxy clusters and the investigation of the cosmic microwave background.

White is currently one of the most cited and most important astrophysicists worldwide. His over 500 publications achieve an h-index of 174 (as of the end of 2018 according to Google Scholar )

honors and awards

White has been a Fellow of the Royal Society since 1997, a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina since 2005, a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences since 2007, a Fellow of the Academia Europaea since 2009 and a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences since 2015 .

Fonts

  • with Martin Rees: Core condensation in heavy halos: A Two stage theory for galaxy formation and clusters , Monthly Notices Roy. Astron. Soc., Vol. 183, 1978, pp. 341-358
  • with Darren J. Croton, Volker Springel , Carlos S. Frenk , G. De Lucia, L. Gao, A. Jenkins, G. Kauffmann, JF Navarro, N. Yoshida: The Many lives of AGN: Cooling flows, black holes and the luminosities and colors of galaxies , Mon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc., Volume 365, 2006, pp. 11-28, Erratum: Mon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc., Volume 367, 2006, p. 864
  • with Marc Davis, George Efstathiou , Carlos S. Frenk: The Evolution of Large Scale Structure in a Universe Dominated by Cold Dark Matter , Astrophys. J., Vol. 292. 1985, 371-394
  • with G. Efstathiou, M. Davis, CS Frenk: Numerical techniques for large cosmological N-body simulations . In: The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series. Volume 57, February 1, 1985, pp. 241-260, doi : 10.1086 / 191003 .
  • with M. Davis, G. Efstathiou, CS Frenk: The evolution of large-scale structure in a universe dominated by cold dark matter . In: The Astrophysical Journal. 292, May 1, 1985, pp. 371-394
  • with Julio Navarro, Carlos S. Frenk: A Universal density profile from hierarchical clustering Astroph. J., Volume 490, 1997, pp. 493-508

Web links

Commons : Simon White  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Member entry by Prof. Dr. Simon DM White (with picture and CV) at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on July 20, 2016.
  2. Simon White elected to the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Retrieved January 14, 2016 .