Professor Roger Davies, Philip Wetton Professor of Astrophysics and Dr Lee’s Reader in Physics at Christ Church college has been elected to the Academia Europaea Earth & Cosmic Sciences section. His election, in recognition of his groundbreaking studies of early-type galaxies, will see him join a global cohort of 400 world-leading physicists and earth scientists.
Professor Davies’ work has transformed our understanding of the physical processes at work in assembling massive galaxies. Early-type galaxies account for half the starlight in the Universe, and they are the dominant population in clusters of galaxies where the most massive galaxies are found. Professor Davies’ work includes the measurement and modelling of the structure, age, composition, star-formation history and dark-matter content of galaxies. He has led major surveys and developed novel instruments and techniques, most recently a new class of mapping spectrograph that has been applied in many fields of astronomy.
Professor Davies received his PhD in 1979 before spending six years on the staff at the US National Observatory in Tucson, Arizona. He moved to Oxford in 1988 to lead the UK's participation in the construction of the 8m Gemini telescopes, in Hawaii and Chile. Returning to Oxford in 2002, he took up the Chairmanship of the Physics Department from 2005-10 & served as Head of Astrophysics from 2011-14. He is the founding Director of the Oxford University Centre for Astrophysical Surveys which has been funded by the Hintze Family Charitable Foundation. He is currently President of the European Astronomical Society.
The Academia Europaea is the pan-European academy of science, humanities and letters with a membership of more than 4,000 eminent scholars from across Europe. Its elected members collectively aim to promote learning, education and research.
Professor Davies commented upon his election, “It is a great honour to be elected member of the Academia Europaea. Its mission – excellence in scholarship and education of the public – has underpinned my academic career.’
