Biography:Enrique García-Berro

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Enrique García-Berro Montilla
Born(1959-03-03)March 3, 1959
Jaen, Spain
DiedSeptember 23, 2017(2017-09-23) (aged 58)
Sallent de Gállego, Spain
Enrique García-Berro during one of his meetings with students at the Institute for Space Studies of Catalonia

Enrique García-Berro Montilla (1959 - 2017) was a Spanish and Catalan astrophysicist.[1] He was a world-recognized expert in stellar astrophysics, in particular in the theory of white dwarf stars and type Ia supernovae.

Life and career

García-Berro earned his master's degree in physics from the University of Barcelona in 1982 with highest honors.[2] He went on at Barcelona to pursue his Ph.D. with Jordi Isern. He earned his Ph.D. in theoretical astrophysics in 1987 cum laude.

In 1987, García-Berro was appointed Associate Professor in Applied Physics at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC). In 2003, he was promoted to full Professor. From 2006 to 2013, he was the Vice-Rector at the UPC. García-Berro proved to be a capable administrator, and was appointed to be the director of the Serra Húnter program, designed to attract world-class faculty to Catalonian universities.[3] García-Berro also served as the assistant director of the Institut d'Estudis Espacials de Catalunya (IEEC) from 2002 to 2005.

García-Berro was married to Isabel, a biologist at the University of Barcelona, and the couple had three children: Aurora, Isabel and Ignacio. García-Berro was an avid athlete and fan of outdoors sports, and was a keen mountain hiker and cyclist.

Research

García-Berro was a highly-productive scientific researcher and made a number of important contributions to the knowledge of stellar evolution, with a particular emphasis on white dwarfs. During a stay at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, he collaborated with the renowned astrophysicist Icko Iben on the theory of stars whose initial masses are between 9 and 11 times the mass of the sun, right at the cusp between stars which ultimately form white dwarfs, and those which undergo gravitational collapse. Together, they published a series of papers which remain standards in the field.[4][5]

Towards the end of his life, García-Berro carried out pioneering three-dimensional simulations of merging white dwarfs with his students and collaborators.[6] These merging white dwarf systems are believed to give rise to a range of interesting stellar systems, from strongly-magnetized white dwarfs, to Type Ia supernovae and R Coronae Borealis variable stars, to gravitational wave sources.

He advised 14 PhD Theses [7] and at least 12 degree or master theses [8] most of them at the UPC. Several of these were related to the Gaia space astrometry mission of ESA,[9] including works on payload data handling and compression. Some led to publications on this more technological field,[10][11][12] with the last one being published shortly after his death.[13] These works triggered his participation as co-founder and associate[14] of a spin-off company of the UPC and also of the UB, aiming at commercial applications of a patented data compression technology that he co-invented.[15]

Death

García-Berro passed away during a tragic climbing accident on September 23, 2017 on the Picos del Infierno in the Pyrenees, near Sallent de Gállego, Spain.[16]

References

  1. ↑ "Enrique García-Berro Montilla (1959 - 2017) | American Astronomical Society" (in en). https://aas.org/obituaries/enrique-garc%C3%ADa-berro-1959-2017. 
  2. ↑ "Enrique García-Berro CV". https://www.icranet.org/am/cv/garcia-berro.pdf. 
  3. ↑ "Objective and organization" (in en-GB). http://serrahunter.gencat.cat/en/el_serra_hunter_programme_shp_pla_serra_hunter/objectiu_i_organitzacio/. 
  4. ↑ García-Berro, Enrique; Ritossa, Claudio; Icko Iben, Jr. (1997). "On the Evolution of Stars that Form Electron-Degenerate Cores Processed by Carbon Burning. III. The Inward Propagation of a Carbon-Burning Flame and Other Properties of a 9 M☉ Model Star" (in en). The Astrophysical Journal 485 (2): 765. doi:10.1086/304444. ISSN 0004-637X. 
  5. ↑ Ritossa, Claudio; Garcia-Berro, Enrique; Iben, Icko (March 1996). "On the Evolution of Stars That Form Electron-degenerate Cores Processed by Carbon Burning. II. Isotope Abundances and Thermal Pulses in a 10 Msun Model with an ONe Core and Applications to Long-Period Variables, Classical Novae, and Accretion-induced Collapse". The Astrophysical Journal 460: 489. doi:10.1086/176987. ISSN 0004-637X. Bibcode: 1996ApJ...460..489R. 
  6. ↑ Lorén-Aguilar, P.; Isern, J.; García-Berro, E. (2009-04-29). "High-resolution smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations of the merger of binary white dwarfs" (in en). Astronomy & Astrophysics 500 (3): 1193–1205. doi:10.1051/0004-6361/200811060. ISSN 0004-6361. 
  7. ↑ "ArbolMat / Enrique García-Berro". https://www.rsme.es/arbolmat/GarciaBerro/GarciaBerro-Dossier.html. 
  8. ↑ "Cerca" (in en). https://upcommons.upc.edu/discover?rpp=10&etal=0&query=Garc%C3%ADa-Berro&scope=/&group_by=none&page=1&filtertype_0=type&filter_relational_operator_0=equals&filter_0=Master+thesis+(pre-Bologna+period)#. 
  9. ↑ "Enrique García-Berro - Gaia - Cosmos". https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/gaia-people/enrique-garcia-berro. 
  10. ↑ Portell, J.; Luri, X.; Garcia-Berro, E. (April 2006). "High-performance payload data handling system for Gaia". IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems 42 (2): 421–435. doi:10.1109/TAES.2006.1642561. ISSN 1557-9603. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1642561. 
  11. ↑ Mora, Jordi Portell de; Villafranca, Alberto G.; García-Berro, Enrique (July 2010). "Quick outlier-resilient entropy coder for space missions". Journal of Applied Remote Sensing 4 (1): 041784. doi:10.1117/1.3479585. ISSN 1931-3195. https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/journals/journal-of-applied-remote-sensing/volume-4/issue-1/041784/Quick-outlier-resilient-entropy-coder-for-space-missions/10.1117/1.3479585.short. 
  12. ↑ "Outlier-Resilient Entropy Coding" (in en). https://www.springerprofessional.de/en/outlier-resilient-entropy-coding/1818168. 
  13. ↑ Portell, J.; Iudica, R.; García-Berro, E.; Villafranca, A. G.; Artigues, G. (2018-04-03). "FAPEC, a versatile and efficient data compressor for space missions". International Journal of Remote Sensing 39 (7): 2022–2042. doi:10.1080/01431161.2017.1399478. ISSN 0143-1161. https://doi.org/10.1080/01431161.2017.1399478. 
  14. ↑ "La UB y la UPC crean la primera 'spin-off' conjunta: una empresa dedicada a la tecnología de compresión de grandes volúmenes de datos — Sala de Premsa - Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)". https://saladepremsa2.upc.edu/es/al-dia/mes-noticies/la-ub-y-la-upc-crean-la-primera-spin-off-conjunta-una-empresa-dedicada-a-la-tecnologia-de-compresion-de-grandes-volumenes-de-datos.html. 
  15. ↑ De Mora, Jordi Portell I; Enrique Garcíaberro Montilla & Xavier Luri Carrascoso et al., "Method for fully adaptive calibration of a prediction error coder", US patent 9002913, issued 2009-06-22, assigned to Universitat de Barcelonaand Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya
  16. ↑ Villanueva, María José. "Fallece un hombre de 58 años en el tercer accidente mortal consecutivo de montañeros que iban solos". https://www.heraldo.es/noticias/aragon/2017/09/25/localizado-cuerpo-montanero-fallecido-zona-del-pico-infernos-1198467-300.html. 




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