The ICG is a research institute at the

University of Portsmouth The University of Portsmouth is a public university in Portsmouth, England. It is one of only four universities in the South East England, South East of England rated as Gold in the Government's Teaching Excellence Framework. With approximately 28 ...

devoted to topics in cosmology,

galaxy evolution The study of galaxy formation and evolution is concerned with the processes that formed a heterogeneous universe from a homogeneous beginning, the formation of the first galaxies, the way galaxies change over time, and the processes that have gen ...

and

gravitation In physics, gravity () is a fundamental interaction which causes mutual attraction between all things with mass or energy. Gravity is, by far, the weakest of the four fundamental interactions, approximately 1038 times weaker than the stron ...

. It has nearly 50 staff, post-docs and students working on subjects from inflation in the

early Universe The chronology of the universe describes the history and future of the universe according to Big Bang cosmology. Research published in 2015 estimates the earliest stages of the universe's existence as taking place 13.8 billion years ago, with ...

to understanding the

stellar populations During 1944, Walter Baade categorized groups of stars within the Milky Way into stellar populations. In the abstract of the article by Baade, he recognizes that Jan Oort originally conceived this type of classification in 1926: Baade noticed th ...

galaxies A galaxy is a system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, dark matter, bound together by gravity. The word is derived from the Greek ' (), literally 'milky', a reference to the Milky Way galaxy that contains the Solar System. ...

. Research at the Institute is supported by grants from STFC (the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council), the Royal Society and the European Union.

History

The Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, or ICG, was established as an independent research department by the University of Portsmouth in January 2002. It was formed from members of the Relativity and Cosmology Group that had been set up by Prof

David Matravers David Matravers (26 September 1937 – 31 May 2022) was a British mathematician and cosmologist and Professor of Mathematics at the University of Portsmouth. His research interests were in Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Cosmology. He found ...

, head of the School of Mathematical Studies at the

, following the arrival of Roy Maartens as a lecturer in 1994.

David Wands David Wands is Professor of Cosmology at the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, in the University of Portsmouth. He was educated at Dr Challoner's Grammar School, Amersham, and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he read Natura ...

joined the group as a research fellow in 1996. The group won their first major research grant from PPARC (the UK Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council) in 1998 to study the evolution of cosmological structure. In the UK Research Assessment Exercise in 2001 (RAE2001) research submitted by the group was awarded a grade 5, recognising the international excellence of their work in applied mathematics, and leading to the establishment of the ICG the next year. Bob Nichol joined the ICG from

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

(Pittsburgh) in 2004 initiating a research programme in observational cosmology. In the 2008 UK government Research Assessment Exercise (RAE2008), 75% of the ICG research was judged to be "Internationally Excellent" or better (3* or 4* status, with 4* being the highest). This ranking places the ICG in the top 6 Applied Maths groups in the UK. In 2009 the Institute moved from offices in Mercantile House to purpose-built rooms for nearly 50 researchers on the top floor of the Dennis Sciama Building. The building was officially opened by the Astronomer Royal, and former student of

Dennis Sciama Dennis William Siahou Sciama, (; 18 November 1926 – 18/19 December 1999) was a British physicist who, through his own work and that of his students, played a major role in developing British physics after the Second World War. He was the PhD ...

, Prof Martin Rees. Roy Maartens was the director of the ICG from January 2002 until October 2010 when he took up a Square Kilometre Array research chair at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa, dividing his time between Portsmouth (30%) and Cape Town (70%). Since October 2010 the directors of the ICG are Bob Nichol and

Resources

The ICG is a member of the following projects:
The South East Physics Network Astrophysics collaboration (SEPNet ASTRO)The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS)The UK National Cosmology Supercomputer Consortium (COSMOS)The Dark Energy Survey (DES)The Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) UK consortium
* ttp://www.galaxyzoo.org/ Galaxy Zoo* ttp://www.cv.nrao.edu/~mlacy/servs.html The Spitzer Extragalactic Representative Volume Survey (SERVS)br>The UniMass project
In addition, the University of Portsmouth is home to the SCIAMA supercomputer
SEPnet Computing Infrastructure for Astrophysical Modelling and Analysis

External links

Home page of the Institute of Cosmology and GravitationOutreach website of the Institute of Cosmology and GravitationHome page of the University of Portsmouth

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Institute Of Cosmology And Gravitation, University Of Portsmouth Astronomy institutes and departments Research institutes in the United Kingdom Astronomy in the United Kingdom Educational institutions established in 2002 2002 establishments in England