Professor James Binney, Emeritus Professor at the University of Oxford’s Department of Physics, has been awarded the Royal Astronomical Society’s Gold Medal for his work researching the structure and evolution of galaxies. Previous recipients of the award include Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, and Edwin Hubble.
Professor Binney completed his D.Phil. at Christ Church, Oxford and has held a postdoctoral position at the University since 1981, where he was a lecturer, fellow, and tutor at Merton College. He has previously been awarded the Maxwell Prize of the Institute of Physics and the Isaac Newton medal.
His influential work focuses on early galaxy formation and his research on the importance of cooling gas in forming dark matter halos, which determine the structure of different galaxies, is an integral part in galaxy formation models. Binney’s research has also shed light on black holes, star formation, and the chemical evolution of galaxies.
He calls our galaxy: “the complicated beast”. Having contributed significantly to producing the standard model for the mass distribution of the Milky Way, he is now working with data from the Gaia observatory to revise this model using the theoretical methods he himself helped develop.
Several textbooks written by Binney are now considered a standard work of reference and are widely used in the field. He has authored over 200 articles and served on many funding bodies both within the UK and overseas. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society, one of the world’s oldest and most influential scientific institutions.
Binney said: “I am delighted to be honoured by the RAS by the award of this year’s Gold Medal. It was my great good fortune to be a theorist at a time of extraordinary progress in astronomy, mostly driven by spectacular advances in instrumentation.
“Most of what I’ve achieved has been in collaboration with generations of brilliant students and postdocs – this honour must be shared with them.”Previously, Binney has said “it’s a miracle that and a mystery that the material world can be described mathematically” and that “learning physics changes and enriches your outlook on anything.”
