Luke O’Connor Drury (born 1953 in Dublin) is an Irish mathematician and astrophysicist at the

Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS) ( ga, Institiúid Ard-Léinn Bhaile Átha Cliath) is a statutory independent research institute in Ireland. It was established in 1940 on the initiative of the Taoiseach, Éamon de Valera, in Dub ...

(DIAS) with research interests in

plasma physics Plasma ()πλάσμα
, Henry George Liddell, R ...

particle acceleration In a compressible sound transmission medium - mainly air - air particles get an accelerated motion: the particle acceleration or sound acceleration with the symbol a in metre/second2. In acoustics or physics, acceleration (symbol: ''a'') is def ...

gas dynamics Compressible flow (or gas dynamics) is the branch of fluid mechanics that deals with flows having significant changes in fluid density. While all flows are compressible, flows are usually treated as being incompressible when the Mach number (the r ...

shock waves In physics, a shock wave (also spelled shockwave), or shock, is a type of propagating disturbance that moves faster than the local speed of sound in the medium. Like an ordinary wave, a shock wave carries energy and can propagate through a med ...

, and

cosmic rays Cosmic rays are high-energy particles or clusters of particles (primarily represented by protons or atomic nuclei) that move through space at nearly the speed of light. They originate from the Sun, from outside of the Solar System in our own ...

. He was President of the

Royal Irish Academy The Royal Irish Academy (RIA; ga, Acadamh Ríoga na hÉireann), based in Dublin, is an academic body that promotes study in the sciences, humanities and social sciences. It is Ireland's premier List of Irish learned societies, learned socie ...

from 2011 to 2014.Professor Luke Drury
Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies 2020Luke Drury, ALLEA Board Member

Education and career

Drury is a son of psychiatrist and philosopher

Maurice O'Connor Drury Maurice O'Connor Drury (known as 'Con Drury' to his friends) (3 July 1907 – 25 December 1976) was a psychiatrist and follower of Ludwig Wittgenstein born in Marlborough, Wiltshire, England of Irish parents. He grew up in Exeter, Devon, Eng ...

. In 1969 he won first place at the Aer Lingus Young Scientists’ exhibition, now called the

BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition The BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition, commonly called the Young Scientist Exhibition, is an Irish annual school students' science competition that has been held in the Royal Dublin Society, Dublin, Ireland, every January since the co ...

. He was elected a scholar of

Trinity College Dublin , name_Latin = Collegium Sanctae et Individuae Trinitatis Reginae Elizabethae juxta Dublin , motto = ''Perpetuis futuris temporibus duraturam'' (Latin) , motto_lang = la , motto_English = It will last i ...

(TCD) in 1973 and got a BA (mod) in pure mathematics and experimental physics from TCD in 1975 and earned his Ph.D. in astrophysics from University of Cambridge in 1979, writing a thesis on
Some fluid dynamical problems in Astrophysics
, supervised by John M. Stewart.TCD Physicist Elected President of the Royal Irish Academy
18 March 2011, Trinity College Dublin From 1980 to 1986 he worked at the

Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics The Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik ("MPI for Nuclear Physics" or MPIK for short) is a research institute in Heidelberg, Germany. The institute is one of the 80 institutes of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (Max Planck Society), an independent, n ...

in Heidelberg with Professor H. J. Voelk. In 1986 he returned to Dublin where he became Senior Professor in the School of Cosmic Physics and head of the then Cosmic Ray Section (now Astronomy and Astrophysics Section) at DIAS.Professor Luke Drury
When Experts Disagree He served as interim Director of The

Irish Centre for High-End Computing The Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC) is the national high-performance computing centre in Ireland. It was established in 2005 and provides supercomputing resources, support, training and related services. ICHEC is involved in educati ...

(ICHEC) in 2006. From 1998 to 2019 he was

Andrews Professor of Astronomy The Andrews Professor of Astronomy is a chair in astronomy in Trinity College Dublin was established in 1783 in conjunction with the establishment of Dunsink Observatory. Dunsink was founded in 1785 following a bequest by Provost Francis Andrews ...

, an honorary chair at TCD. Between 2007 and 2018 he acted as director at the

Dunsink Observatory The Dunsink Observatory is an astronomical observatory established in 1785 in the townland of Dunsink in the outskirts of the city of Dublin, Ireland.Alexander Thom''Irish Almanac and Official Directory''7th ed., 1850 p. 258. Retrieved: 2011-02-2 ...

and was head of

Astronomy & Astrophysics Section. He was President of the

from 2011 to 2014.March 2011 – Professor Luke Drury, Director of the School of Cosmic Physics, elected President of the Royal Irish Academy
Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies Drury retired in 2018 but continues to work on issues of policy for science, in particular open access and open science, as a board member of the federation of

All European Academies All European Academies (ALLEA) is the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities. It was founded in 1994, and brings together more than 50 Academies of Sciences and Learned Societies from over 40 member countries of the Council o ...

(ALLEA). He was lead author on the ALLEA response to Plan S. In 2021 he was made an honorary fellow of Trinity College Dublin.TRINITY MONDAY 2021 - FELLOWS AND SCHOLARS
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Selected publications

* On normal modes of gas sheets and discs (1980) MNRAS 193 337 * An introduction to the theory of diffusive shock acceleration of energetic particles in tenuous plasmas (1983) Rep. Prog. Phys. 46 973. * Simple adaptive grids for 1-D initial value problems (1987) J. Comp. Phys. 69 175 (with E. Dorf) * The gamma-ray visibility of supernova remnants. A test of cosmic ray origin (1994) A&A 287 959 (with F. Aharonian and H. J. Voelk) * Escaping the accelerator: how, when and in what numbers do cosmic rays get out of supernova remnants? (2011) MNRAS 415 1807

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Drury, Luke 1953 births Academics of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies Alumni of Trinity College Dublin Alumni of the University of Cambridge Astrophysicists Cosmic ray physicists Directors of Dunsink Observatory Honorary Fellows of Trinity College Dublin Irish physicists Living people Presidents of the Royal Irish Academy Scientists from Dublin (city) Scholars of Trinity College Dublin