Gary Ferland

Gary Joseph Ferland (born May 10, 1951, in Washington D.C.) is an American astrophysicist.
He is a professor of Physics and Astronomy at The University of Kentucky.

He joined the University of Texas
Astronomy Department
in 1973 where
he received hi
Ph.D.
in 1978, studying
the 1975 explosion of V1500 Cygni at
McDonald Observatory.
From 1978 to 1980 he was at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge
where he worked with Martin Rees on
International Ultraviolet Explorer observations
of radio galaxies

He joined the faculty of the University of Kentucky
in 1980.
The American Astronomical Society's
Astronomy Genealogy Project lists the 17 PhDs he
has supervised.

Ferland is a Fellow of the American Astronomical Society,
and has served on their Governing Council in addition to their Publications Board.
He was named Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2023 and is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society.
He is a long-time member of the International Astronomical Union where he was on the Organizing Committee of Division VI (2003-2009)
and Commission 34 (2006-2012) Interstellar Matter.

His research involves the interactions between light
and matter, especially how the photons we receive
can tell us about events at the edges of the Universe.
He has also studied such diverse environments
as the interstellar medium,
planetary nebulae, H II region, photodissociation regions, and Active Galactic Nuclei.
His discovery of a tidal disruption event in the Seyfert galaxy NGC 5548 was listed by Science News
as one of the top ten discoveries in astronomy in 1986.

He is best known as a developer of the Open Access
spectral simulation code
Cloudy
a project he started at
Cambridge in 1978.
The code uses a large database of
atomic, molecular
and interstellar grain cross sections and
rate coefficients
to determine the physical state of a
non-equilibrium plasma, the emission or absorption properties
of Interstellar clouds,
and predict the observed spectrum.
Nature Astronomy interviewed
Ferland on the origin and evolution of
Cloudy as a featured article in their
Access Code
series.

He has edited two books in addition to more than 700 articles on astronomy and astrophysics.
He is a co-author on the
influential
2006 textbook ''Astrophysics of Gaseous Nebulae and Active Galactic Nuclei,'' written with Donald E. Osterbrock of
Lick Observatory and the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Honors and awards

Ferland was named as American Astronomical Society Fellow in 2021 and as Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2022.
Both cited his development of the Cloudy spectral simulation code.
He received Catedratico de Excelencia Guillermo Haro from
the National Institute of Astrophysics, Optics and Electronics, ( Tonantzintla, Puebla, Mexico).
in 2016.
A Festschrift was held in his honor at
National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City in 2016.

He has received many honorary visiting positions:

* At Cambridge University
** Staff Member, Institute of Astronomy, 1978-1980
** Senior Visiting Fellow, 1987, 1990, 2007–2008, 2022
** Sackler Visiting Fellow, 2007-2008
** Visiting Associate, Darwin College, 2007-2008
** Kavli Visiting Fellowship, DAMPT ( Applied Maths and Theoretical Physics), 2019
* At Queen's University Belfast
** Distinguished Visiting Fellowship, Centre for Experimental Physics, 2002-2005
** Leverhulme Professor 2014-2015
** Visiting Research Professor, School of Mathematics and Physics, 2017-2018
* Other Positions
** Visiting Fellow, Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics, University of Colorado Boulder 1990-1991
** Visiting Astronomer, Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory, La Serena, Chile 1992-1993
** Visiting Professor, Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Toronto, Canada, 1998-1999
** Visiting Astronomer, Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center, Warsaw, Poland 2015

Personal life

Ferland was the son of Andrew Joseph Ferland,
a career officer in the United States Air Force,
and Ida Marie Schneemann Ferland, a homemaker.
He was raised in Washington D.C.,
the Panama Canal Zone,
Alaska, Florida, and Texas, where he received a BS in Physics with Special Honors
in 1972 at the University of Texas.

He married Ann Elizabeth Clemmens (1952-) in 1983.
They have two children, Peter Andrew (1987-)
and Elizabeth Marie (1989-).

Books

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*
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References

External links

Gary J. Ferland's Universit of Kentucky PageThe Cloudy Project Web PageAAS Ph.D. Genealogy Gary Ferland on Google ScholarGary Ferland on the NASA ADSAstronomers Elected 2021 Fellows of the AASAstronomers Elected 2022 Fellows of the AAAS

:1951 births
:Living people
:University of Texas alumni
:Cambridge University alumni
:University of Kentucky faculty
:Fellows of the American Astronomical Society
:Fellows of the Royal Astronomical Society
:Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
:Spectroscopists

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ferland, Gary J.
1951 births
Living people