Brian J. Boyle is a Scottish astrophysicist based in

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

since 1996. His primary research interests are in the fields of

quasars A quasar is an extremely luminous active galactic nucleus (AGN). It is pronounced , and sometimes known as a quasi-stellar object, abbreviated QSO. This emission from a galaxy nucleus is powered by a supermassive black hole with a mass rangi ...

active galaxies An active galactic nucleus (AGN) is a compact region at the center of a galaxy that has a much-higher-than-normal luminosity over at least some portion of the electromagnetic spectrum with characteristics indicating that the luminosity is not pr ...

and

cosmology Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in Latin by German philosopher ...

. He has been involved in science-direction setting in Australia for over 15 years, contributing the mid-term review in 2000, leading the development of the Australian Astronomy Decadal Plan 2006-15 and facilitating the development of the Optical and Radio Astronomy Investment Plan for the

National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, c ...

in 2007. He was awarded the Centenary Medal for services to Australian Astronomy in 2003 and elected as a

fellow of the Australian Academy of Science The Fellowship of the Australian Academy of Science is made up of about 500 Australian scientists. Scientists judged by their peers to have made an exceptional contribution to knowledge in their field may be elected to Fellowship of the Academy ...

in 2006. Boyle is currently CSIRO SKA Director as well as the Project Director for the Australia–New Zealand

SKA Ska (; ) is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. It combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. Ska is characterized by a walki ...

bid. In these roles he plays a major part both nationally and internationally in the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) program; a project to build the world's largest cm-wavelength radio telescope.

Education

Boyle attended school at

Stewart's Melville College Stewart's Melville College (SMC) is an independent day and boarding school in Edinburgh, Scotland. Classes are all boys in the 1st to 5th years and co-educational in Sixth (final) year. It has a roll of about 750 pupils. The school is twinned w ...

Edinburgh, Scotland Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian on the southern shore of ...

. He obtained a

BSc A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University ...

in astrophysics from the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 15 ...

in 1982 and a PhD from the Durham University in 1986. His thesis title was "The evolution and clustering of optically selected quasi-stellar objects."

Career

Boyle has held positions at the

, as Director of the Australian Astronomical Observatory (1996 to 2003) and Director of CSIRO

Australia Telescope National Facility The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)'s radio astronomy observatories are collectively known as the Australia Telescope National Facility (ATNF), with the facility supporting Australia's research in radio astron ...

(2003 to 2009) before his appointment to CSIRO SKA Director in February 2009.

Research

Boyle has published more than 300 papers in astronomy, and has undertaken research programs on the: *

cosmological Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in Latin by German philosopher ...

distribution of quasars * clustering of faint galaxies * nature of galaxies associated with distant quasars * origin of the

X-ray background The observed X-ray background is thought to result from, at the "soft" end (below 0.3 keV), galactic X-ray emission, the "galactic" X-ray background, and, at the "hard" end (above 0.3keV), from a combination of many unresolved X-ray sources outside ...

* nature of the faint radio source population. In 2007, Boyle was a member of one of the two teams of scientists who shared the 2007 Gruber Cosmology Prize. The

team A team is a group of individuals (human or non-human) working together to achieve their goal. As defined by Professor Leigh Thompson (academic), Leigh Thompson of the Kellogg School of Management, " team is a group of people who are interde ...

was awarded the prize for their discovery that the expansion of the Universe is

accelerating In mechanics, acceleration is the rate of change of the velocity of an object with respect to time. Accelerations are vector quantities (in that they have magnitude and direction). The orientation of an object's acceleration is given by th ...

, leading to the idea of an

expansion Expansion may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media * ''L'Expansion'', a French monthly business magazine * ''Expansion'' (album), by American jazz pianist Dave Burrell, released in 2004 * ''Expansions'' (McCoy Tyner album), 1970 * ''Expansio ...

force, dubbed

dark energy In physical cosmology and astronomy, dark energy is an unknown form of energy that affects the universe on the largest scales. The first observational evidence for its existence came from measurements of supernovas, which showed that the univ ...

Awards (Since 2000)

* January 2000: Appointed Adjunct Professor,

University of NSW The University of New South Wales (UNSW), also known as UNSW Sydney, is a public research university based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is one of the founding members of Group of Eight, a coalition of Australian research-intensiv ...

* January 2001: Centenary Medal for "services to Australian astronomy" * September 2005: Awarded Fellowship

Australian Institute of Company Directors The Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD) is a non-profit membership organization for directors. The AICD is a founding member of the Global Network of Director Institutes (GNDI). History The origins of the AICD can be traced ba ...

* May 2006: Elected a Fellow of the

Australian Academy of Science The Australian Academy of Science was founded in 1954 by a group of distinguished Australians, including Australian Fellows of the Royal Society of London. The first president was Sir Mark Oliphant. The academy is modelled after the Royal Soc ...

* December 2006: Elected Honorary Fellow of the

Royal Astronomical Society (Whatever shines should be observed) , predecessor = , successor = , formation = , founder = , extinction = , merger = , merged = , type = NG ...

* September 2007: 2007

Gruber Prize in Cosmology The Gruber Prize in Cosmology, established in 2000, is one of three prestigious international awards worth US$500,000 made by the Gruber Foundation, a non-profit organization based at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Since 2001, the G ...

(shared) * January 2013: Public Service Medal for "outstanding public service to Australian astronomy and for leadership of the Australian team bidding to host the international Square Kilometre Array facility".

References

External links