Mario Andrés Hamuy Wackenhut (born 1960) is a Chilean Astronomer and Professor of Astronomy at the

University of Chile The University of Chile ( es, Universidad de Chile) is a public research university in Santiago, Chile. It was founded on November 19, 1842, and inaugurated on September 17, 1843.

and Cerro Calan Observatory. He is well known for his observational work on all classes of supernovae, especially the use of Type Ia and Type II supernovae as measures of cosmic distance.

Career

Mario Hamuy is the son of Mario Hamuy Berr, an economist and politician of

levantine Levantine may refer to: * Anything pertaining to the Levant, the region centered around modern Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and Jordan, including any person from the Levant ** Syria (region), corresponding to the modern countries of the Lev ...

descent. He studied at

Instituto Nacional General José Miguel Carrera Instituto Nacional General José Miguel Carrera, often shortened to Instituto Nacional (National Institute), is a public boys' school in downtown Santiago, Chile which teaches 4.400 students between 7th and 12th grade. 170 teachers are employed ...

of Santiago. Hamuy was a student in astronomy and physics at the

University of Chile The University of Chile ( es, Universidad de Chile) is a public research university in Santiago, Chile. It was founded on November 19, 1842, and inaugurated on September 17, 1843.

working with Jorge Melnick. In February 1987, he came to the

Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory The Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) is an astronomical observatory located on Cerro Tololo in the Coquimbo Region of northern Chile, with additional facilities located on Cerro Pachón about to the southeast. It is approximately ...

and within a few days of his arrival when the

Type II supernova A Type II supernova (plural: ''supernovae'' or ''supernovas'') results from the rapid collapse and violent explosion of a massive star. A star must have at least 8 times, but no more than 40 to 50 times, the mass of the Sun () to undergo th ...

SN1987A SN 1987A was a type II supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. It occurred approximately from Earth and was the closest observed supernova since Kepler's Supernova. 1987A's light reached Earth on Febr ...

exploded in the Large Magellanic Cloud, he began a major campaign at CTIO to monitor this important supernova. In 1989, in collaboration with Jose Maza, Mark M. Phillips, and Nicholas Suntzeff, he began the Calán/Tololo Supernova Survey which led to the pioneering work on the standard candle luminosities of Type Ia supernovae. This work led to the precise measurements of the

Hubble Constant Hubble's law, also known as the Hubble–Lemaître law, is the observation in physical cosmology that galaxies are moving away from Earth at speeds proportional to their distance. In other words, the farther they are, the faster they are moving ...

H₀ and the

deceleration parameter The deceleration parameter ''q'' in cosmology is a dimensionless measure of the cosmic acceleration of the expansion of space in a Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker universe. It is defined by: :q \ \stackrel\ -\frac where a is the s ...

q₀, the latter indicating the presence of a

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 ...

cosmological constant In cosmology, the cosmological constant (usually denoted by the Greek capital letter lambda: ), alternatively called Einstein's cosmological constant, is the constant coefficient of a term that Albert Einstein temporarily added to his field eq ...

dominating the mass/energy of the

Universe The universe is all of space and time and their contents, including planets, stars, galaxies, and all other forms of matter and energy. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological description of the development of the universe. ...

. In graduate school at the

University of Arizona The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first university in the Arizona Territory. T ...

at the

Steward Observatory Steward Observatory is the research arm of the Department of Astronomy at the University of Arizona (UArizona). Its offices are located on the UArizona campus in Tucson, Arizona (US). Established in 1916, the first telescope and building were f ...

working with Professor Phil Pinto, he changed his focus to the study of core collapse supernovae, in particular using

e to measure geometric distances using the Baade- Wesselink method, also called the expanding-photosphere method (EPM). With Pinto, he invented a semi-empirical method to measure distances to Type II events, called the Standard Candle method, which improved the distance accuracies over EPM.

Awards and honors

Asteroid 109097 Hamuy, discovered by Spanish astronomer Rafael Ferrando at the Pla D'Arguines Observatory in 2001, was named after him. The official was published by the Minor Planet Center on 18 February 2011 (). In 2015 he won the National Prize for Exact Sciences. He is also the president of

CONICYT CONICYT is a Chilean government agency responsible for coordinating, promoting and aiding scientific research in the country. The name is an acronym of ''Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica'' meaning "National Commi ...

, the Chilean government's scientific research agency and a recipient of the 2016

TWAS Prize This is a list of recipients of the TWAS Prize, awarded annually by The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS). Summary Agricultural Sciences Biology Chemistry Earth Sciences Engineering Sciences Mathematics Medical Sc ...

References

External links

Mario Hamuy, directory page at Universidad de Chile

Mario Hamuy, directory page at the IAU
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hamuy, Mario 1960 births Living people Chilean astronomers Cosmologists University of Chile alumni Chilean people of Syrian descent University of Arizona alumni 20th-century astronomers 21st-century astronomers TWAS laureates