Jeremy Mould

Jeremy R. Mould (born 31 July 1949, Bristol) is an Australian astronomer currently at the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing at Swinburne University of Technology.[1] Mould was previously Director of the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Australian National University and the American National Optical Astronomy Observatory.[2] He is an Honorary Professorial Fellow, at the University of Melbourne.[3]

Life

He immigrated to Australia in 1963. He graduated from the University of Melbourne, and Australian National University with a PhD.[4] He was research fellow at Kitt Peak National Observatory, and professor at the California Institute of Technology.

Research

Dr. Mould's work at Caltech during the early 1980s aimed to determine both the size and the age of the Universe by identifying and calibrating Standard Candles, that is, very bright stars whose Absolute Magnitude can be accurately measured when near the Earth, with more distant examples being identified by their color, spectrum, or in the case of Cepheid Variables, the period of oscillation of their brightness.

In collaboration with Gary DaCosta and Michael David Crawford, Dr. Mould prepared Hertzsprung Russell Diagrams of Large Magellanic Cloud and Small Magellanic Cloud Globular Clusters to determine their age, with the resulting Standard Candle being the brightest star in each cluster, with that star's absolute luminosity being derivable from its distance, with the B-R Color of the brightest cluster's star being used to determine the ages of more distant clusters by the colors of their brightest stars.[5][6][7]

The Magellanic Clouds are small galaxies that orbit the Milky Way Galaxy, with the distance from Earth to the Large Magellanic Cloud being 157,000 light years and that of the Small Magellanic Cloud being 200,000.

During the Summer of 1983, Mould, daCosta and Crawford extended this work to a distance of 2.5 million light years by recording CCD spectrograms of Globular Clusters orbiting the Andromeda Galaxy at the Cassegrain Focus of the Five Meter Hale Telescope at Palomar Mountain Observatory, with the Standard Candle being determined by the expectation that the spectra of each cluster as a whole would be dominated by the spectrum of the brightest star in it.

Collaborators

Awards

According to ISI Highly Cited he is among the highest cited astronomers in the world.[8] Asteroid 18240 Mould is named in his honour. Mould was awarded the George Van Biesbroeck Prize in 1981 with Marc Aaronson, the Newton Lacy Pierce Prize in Astronomy in 1984 with Marc Aaronson, and the Gruber Prize in Cosmology in 2009 with Wendy Freedman and Robert Kennicutt.

References

  1. ↑ Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing Staff
  2. ↑ Acclaimed astronomer joins Swinburne
  3. ↑ http://www.findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/researcher/person21845.html
  4. ↑ http://www.noao.edu/outreach/press/mould.html
  5. ↑ Mould, J.R.; DaCosta, G.S.; Crawford, M.D. (May 1984). "The Intermediate Age SMC Cluster Lindsay 113". Astrophysical Journal. Institute of Physics. 280: 595–599. doi:10.1086/162031.
  6. ↑ DaCosta, G.S.; Mould, J.R.; Crawford, M.D. (October 1985). "The Age of the LMC Globular Cluster NGC 2213". Astrophysical Journal. Institute of Physics. 297: 582–592. doi:10.1086/163554.
  7. ↑ DaCosta, G.S.; Mould, J.R.; Crawford, M.D. (May 1986). "The Age of the Large Magellanic Cloud Globular Cluster NGC 1651". Astrophysical Journal. Institute of Physics. 304: 265–272. doi:10.1086/164160.
  8. ↑ ISI Highly Cited Researchers Version 1.5

External links

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