Biography:Martin Rees

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Short description: British cosmologist and astrophysicist


The Right Honourable

The Lord Rees of Ludlow

OM FRS FREng FMedSci FRAS
Official portrait of Lord Rees of Ludlow crop 2.jpg
Parliamentary portrait, 2019
60th President of the Royal Society
In office
2005–2010
Preceded byThe Lord May of Oxford
Succeeded byPaul Nurse
78th President of the Royal Astronomical Society
In office
1992–1994
Preceded byKen Pounds
Succeeded byCarole Jordan
Member of the House of Lords
Lord Temporal
Assumed office
6 September 2005
Life Peerage
Personal details
Born (1942-06-23) 23 June 1942 (age 82)
York, Yorkshire, England
Political partyNone (crossbencher)
Spouse(s)
Caroline Humphrey (m. 1986)
[1]
Websitewww.ast.cam.ac.uk/~mjr/
EducationShrewsbury School[1]
Alma materUniversity of Cambridge (BA, MA, PhD)
Known forCosmic microwave background radiation quasars
Astronomer Royal
President of Royal Society
AwardsDannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics (1984)
Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1987)
Balzan Prize (1989)
Bower Award (1998)
Gruber Prize in Cosmology (2001)
Albert Einstein World Award of Science (2003)
Michael Faraday Prize (2004)
Crafoord Prize (2005)
Order of Merit (2007)
Templeton Prize (2011)
Isaac Newton Medal (2012)
Dalton Medal (2012)
HonFREng[2] (2007)
Nierenberg Prize (2015)
Fritz Zwicky Prize (2020)
Scientific career
FieldsAstronomy
Astrophysics
InstitutionsUniversity of Cambridge
University of Sussex
ThesisPhysical processes in radio sources and inter-galactic medium (1967)
Doctoral advisorDennis Sciama[3]
Doctoral students
Susan Stepney[10]

Martin John Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow, OM, FRS, FREng, FMedSci, FRAS[11][2] (born 23 June 1942) is a British cosmologist and astrophysicist. He is the fifteenth Astronomer Royal, appointed in 1995,[12][13][14] and was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge from 2004 to 2012 and President of the Royal Society between 2005 and 2010.[15][16][17][18][19][20]

Education and early life

Rees was born on 23 June 1942 in York, England.[1][21] After a peripatetic life during the war his parents, both teachers, settled with Rees, an only child, in a rural part of Shropshire near the border with Wales. There, his parents founded Bedstone College, a boarding school based on progressive educational concepts.[22] He was educated at Bedstone College, then from the age of 13 at Shrewsbury School. He studied for the mathematical tripos at Trinity College, Cambridge,[1] graduating with first class honours. He then undertook post-graduate research at Cambridge and completed a PhD supervised by Dennis Sciama in 1967.[3][23][24] Rees' post-graduate work in astrophysics in the mid-1960s coincided with an explosion of new discoveries, with breakthroughs ranging from confirmation of the Big Bang, the discovery of neutron stars and black holes, and a host of other revelations.[22]

Career and research

After holding postdoctoral research positions in the United Kingdom and the United States, he taught at Sussex University and the University of Cambridge, where he was the Plumian Professor until 1991, and the director of the Institute of Astronomy.

From 1992 to 2003, he was Royal Society Research Professor, and from 2003 Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics. He was Professor of Astronomy at Gresham College, London, in 1975 and became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1979. He holds visiting professorships at Imperial College London and at the University of Leicester. He is a fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge.[25] and an Honorary Fellow of King's College,[26] Clare Hall,[27] and Jesus College, Cambridge.[28]

Rees is the author of more than 500 research papers,[15] and he has made contributions to the origin of cosmic microwave background radiation, as well as to galaxy clustering and formation. His studies of the distribution of quasars led to final disproof of steady state theory.[15]

He was one of the first to propose that enormous black holes power quasars,[29] and that superluminal astronomical observations can be explained as an optical illusion caused by an object moving partly in the direction of the observer.[30]

Since the 1990s, Rees has worked on gamma-ray bursts, especially in collaboration with Peter Mészáros,[31] and on how the "cosmic dark ages" ended when the first stars formed. Since the 1970s he has been interested in anthropic reasoning, and the possibility that our visible universe is part of a vaster "multiverse".[32][33]

Rees is an author of books on astronomy and science intended for the lay public and gives many public lectures and broadcasts. In 2010 he was chosen to deliver the Reith Lectures for the BBC,[34] now published as From Here to Infinity: Scientific Horizons. Rees thinks the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is worthwhile.[35]

Aside from expanding his scientific interests, Rees has written and spoken extensively about the problems and challenges of the 21st century, and the interfaces between science, ethics, and politics.[36][37][38][39] He is a member of the Board of the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, the Oxford Martin School, and the Gates Cambridge Trust. He co-founded the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk[40] and serves on the Scientific Advisory Board for the Future of Life Institute.[41] He has formerly been a Trustee of the British Museum, the Science Museum and the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR).

In August 2014, Rees was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in September's referendum on that issue.[42]

In 2015, he was co-author of the report that launched the Global Apollo Programme, which calls for developed nations to commit to spending 0.02% of their GDP for 10 years, to fund coordinated research to make carbon-free baseload electricity less costly than electricity from coal by the year 2025.[43]

His doctoral students have included Roger Blandford,[3][4] Craig Hogan,[5][6] Nick Kaiser[44] Priyamvada Natarajan,[45] James E. Pringle and Susan Stepney.[10]

Publications

  • Cosmic Coincidences: Dark Matter, Mankind, and Anthropic Cosmology (co-author John Gribbin), 1989, Bantam; ISBN:0-553-34740-3
  • New Perspectives in Astrophysical Cosmology, 1995; ISBN:0-521-64544-1
  • Gravity's Fatal Attraction: Black Holes in the Universe, 1995; ISBN:0-7167-6029-0, 2nd edition 2009, ISBN:0-521-71793-0
  • Before the Beginning – Our Universe and Others, 1997; ISBN:0-7382-0033-6
  • Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe, 1999; ISBN:0-297-84297-8
  • Our Cosmic Habitat, 2001; ISBN:0-691-11477-3
  • Our Final Hour: A Scientist's Warning: How Terror, Error, and Environmental Disaster Threaten Humankind's Future In This Century—On Earth and Beyond (UK title: Our Final Century: Will the Human Race Survive the Twenty-first Century?), 2003; ISBN:0-465-06862-6
  • What We Still Don't Know ISBN:978-0-7139-9821-4 yet to be published.
  • From Here to Infinity: Scientific Horizons, 2011; ISBN:978-1-84668-5033
  • On the Future: Prospects for Humanity, October 2018, Princeton University Press; ISBN:9780691180441

Afterword to other books

  • Afterword to Shyam Wuppuluri, Dali Wu (Eds.), "On Art and Science: Tango of an Eternally Inseparable Duo" Springer, The Frontier Collection 2019.[46]


Honours and awards

He has been President of the Royal Astronomical Society (1992–94) and the British Association (1995–96), and was a Member of Council of the Royal Institution of Great Britain until 2010. Rees has received honorary degrees from a number of universities including Hull, Sussex, Uppsala, Toronto, Durham, Oxford, Yale, Melbourne and Sydney. He belongs to several foreign academies, including the US National Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences,[47] the Science Academy of Turkey[48] and the Japan Academy. He became President of the Royal Society on 1 December 2005[49][50] and continued until the end of the Society's 350th Anniversary Celebrations in 2010. In 2011, he was awarded the Templeton Prize.[51] In 2005, Rees was elevated to a life peerage, sitting as a crossbencher in the House of Lords as Baron Rees of Ludlow, of Ludlow in the County of Shropshire.[52][53] In 2005, he was awarded the Crafoord Prize.[54] Other awards and honours include:

  • Heineman Prize (1984)
  • Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1987)
  • Balzan Prize (1989) for High Energy Astrophysics
  • Knight Bachelor (1992)[55]
  • Bruce Medal (1993)
  • Honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Science and Technology at Uppsala University, Sweden[56] (1995)
  • Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement (1999)[57]
  • Bruno Rossi Prize (2000)
  • Gruber Prize in Cosmology (2001)
  • Albert Einstein World Award of Science (2003)[58]
  • Henry Norris Russell Lectureship of the American Astronomical Society (2004)
  • Lifeboat Foundation's Guardian Award (2004)
  • Royal Society's Michael Faraday Prize for science communication (2004)
  • Life Peerage (2005)[59]
  • Crafoord Prize, with James Gunn and James Peebles (2005)
  • Order of Merit – the personal gift of The Queen (2007)[60]
  • Caird Medal of the National Maritime Museum (2007)
  • Honorary Fellow[2] of the Royal Academy of Engineering[2] (2007)
  • Templeton Prize[61] (2011)
  • Institute of Physics Isaac Newton Medal (2012)
  • Dirac Medal ICTP (2013)[62]
  • Honorary Doctorate, Harvard University (awarded in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA on 26 May 2016)
  • Lilienfeld Prize (2017)
  • Fritz Zwicky Prize for Astrophysics and Cosmology[63] (2020).
  • Elected a Legacy Fellow of the American Astronomical Society (2020).[64]

The Asteroid 4587 Rees and the Sir Martin Rees Academic Scholarship at Shrewsbury International School are named in his honour.

Personal life

Rees married the anthropologist Caroline Humphrey in 1986.[1] He is an atheist but has criticised militant atheists for being too hostile to religion.[65][66][67] Rees is a lifelong supporter of the Labour Party, but has no party affiliation when sitting in the House of Lords.[68][69]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Anon (2017) "REES OF LUDLOW, Baron". Who's Who (online Oxford University Press ed.). A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc. https://www.ukwhoswho.com/view/article/oupww/whoswho/U32152.  (subscription or UK public library membership required) doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.32152 (Subscription content?)
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 "List of Fellows". http://www.raeng.org.uk/about-us/people-council-committees/the-fellowship/list-of-fellows. 
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Martin Rees at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Blandford, Roger David (1973). Electrodynamics and astrophysical applications of strong waves. lib.cam.ac.uk (PhD thesis). University of Cambridge. OCLC 500386171. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.450028.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Hogan, Craig James (1980). Pre galactic history (PhD thesis). University of Cambridge. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.258089.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Hogan, Craig James. "Curriculum vitae". https://www.nsf.gov/mps/ast/aaac/members/2013-14_bios/hogan.pdf. 
  7. ↑ "CURRICULUM VITAE: Priyamvada Natarajan". Yale CampusPress. Yale University. https://campuspress.yale.edu/priya/cv/cv2/. 
  8. ↑ "Martin Rees - the Mathematics Genealogy Project". https://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=78460. 
  9. ↑ "Curriculum Vitae - Nicholas Kaiser". https://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/~kaiser/biblio/cv.pdf. 
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Stepney, Susan (1983). Relativistic thermal plasmas. lib.cam.ac.uk (PhD thesis). University of Cambridge. OCLC 499834005. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.350896.
  11. ↑ Anon (2015). "The Lord Rees of Ludlow OM Kt HonFREng FRS". Royal Society. https://royalsociety.org/people/martin-rees-12156/.  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where:
    "All text published under the heading 'Biography' on Fellow profile pages is available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.” --"Royal Society Terms, conditions and policies". https://royalsociety.org/about-us/terms-conditions-policies/. 
  12. ↑ "Portraits of Astronomers Royal". Royal Museums Greenwich. http://www.rmg.co.uk/explore/astronomy-and-time/astronomy-facts/history/portraits-of-the-astronomers-royal. 
  13. ↑ "Astronomer Royal". The official website of the British Monarchy. http://www.royal.gov.uk/TheRoyalHousehold/OfficialRoyalposts/AstronomerRoyal.aspx. 
  14. ↑ "Astronomer Royal". Royal Household. http://www.royal.gov.uk/TheRoyalHousehold/OfficialRoyalposts/AstronomerRoyal.aspx. 
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 Martin Rees publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (Subscription content?)
  16. ↑ Martin J. Rees at Library of Congress Authorities, with 23 catalogue records
  17. ↑ "2005 talk: Is this our final century?". http://www.ted.com/speakers/sir_martin_rees.html.  accessed 31 August 2014
  18. ↑ "Interviews with Charlie Rose, 2003 and 2008". http://www.charlierose.com/guest/view/1729.  accessed 31 August 2014
  19. ↑ Anon (2010). "New Statesman Interviews Martin Rees". New Statesman. http://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2010/04/interview-science-climate.  accessed 31 August 2014
  20. ↑ Talk by Martin Rees, March 2017 on YouTube
  21. ↑ GRO Register of Births: SEP 1942 9c 1465 YORK – Martin J. Rees, mmn=Bett
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 "Templeton Prize – Current Winner". http://www.templetonprize.org/previouswinners/rees.html. 
  23. ↑ Rees, Martin (1967). Physical Processes in Radio Sources and the Intergalactic Medium. copac.jisc.ac.uk (PhD thesis). University of Cambridge. Archived from the original on 13 June 2018. Retrieved 30 October 2017.
  24. ↑ "Inventory: Martin Rees". Financial Times. 2014. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/7c844532-b80b-11e0-8868-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2IdKRAN00.  (Subscription content?)
  25. ↑ "Master & fellows". Darwin College Cambridge. https://www.darwin.cam.ac.uk/people/fellows. 
  26. ↑ "Honorary Fellows" (in en). http://www.kings.cam.ac.uk/research/fellows/honorary.html. 
  27. ↑ "Honorary Fellow | Clare Hall" (in en). https://www.clarehall.cam.ac.uk/affiliation/honorary-fellow. 
  28. ↑ "Honorary and St Radegund Fellows". Jesus College Cambridge. https://www.jesus.cam.ac.uk/college/people/honorary-st-radegund-fellows. 
  29. ↑ Rees, M.J. (1984). "Black Hole Models for Active Galactic Nuclei". Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics 22: 471–506. doi:10.1146/annurev.aa.22.090184.002351. Bibcode: 1984ARA&A..22..471R. 
  30. ↑ Rees, M.J. (1966). "Appearance of Relativistically Expanding Radio Sources". Nature 211 (5048): 468–70. doi:10.1038/211468a0. Bibcode: 1966Natur.211..468R. 
  31. ↑ Meszaros, P.; Rees, M. J. (1992). "Tidal heating and mass loss in neutron star binaries - Implications for gamma-ray burst models". Astrophysical Journal 397 (10): 570. doi:10.1086/171813. Bibcode: 1992ApJ...397..570M. 
  32. ↑ Carr, B. J.; Rees, M. J. (1979). "The anthropic principle and the structure of the physical world". Nature 278 (5705): 605–612. doi:10.1038/278605a0. Bibcode: 1979Natur.278..605C. 
  33. ↑ Martin J. Rees (1997). Before the Beginning: Our Universe and Others. Perseus Books. ISBN 9780738200330. 
  34. ↑ The Reith Lectures 2010: The Scientific Citizen by Martin Rees, bbc.co.uk; accessed 31 August 2014.
  35. ↑ Interview with Paul Broks, Prospectmagazine.co.uk; accessed 31 August 2014.
  36. ↑ "Martin Rees Biography and Interview". American Academy of Achievement. https://achievement.org/achiever/lord-martin-rees/#interview/. 
  37. ↑ "Dark Materials: The legacy of Joseph Rotblat", guardian.co.uk; accessed 31 August 2014.
  38. ↑ Podcast of Lecture "The World in 2050", given at the James Martin 21st Century School, 21school.ox.ac.uk, February 2009.
  39. ↑ Rees, Martin (23 May 2015). "Astronomer Royal Martin Rees: How soon will robots take over the world?" (in en-GB). The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/hay-festival/11605785/Astronomer-Royal-Martin-Rees-predicts-the-world-will-be-run-by-computers-soon.html. 
  40. ↑ Lewsey, Fred (25 November 2012). "Humanity's last invention and our uncertain future". Research News (University of Cambridge). http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/humanitys-last-invention-and-our-uncertain-future. 
  41. ↑ Who We Are, Future of Life Institute, 2014, http://fli.webfactional.com/who, retrieved 7 May 2014 
  42. ↑ "Celebrities' open letter to Scotland – full text and list of signatories". The Guardian (London). 7 August 2014. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/aug/07/celebrities-open-letter-scotland-independence-full-text. 
  43. ↑ Carrington, Damian. "Global Apollo programme seeks to make clean energy cheaper than coal". The Guardian (Guardian News Media) (2 June 2015). https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jun/02/apollo-programme-for-clean-energy-needed-to-tackle-climate-change. 
  44. ↑ "Nick Kaiser | Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics" (in en). https://higgs.ph.ed.ac.uk/people/associates/nick-kaiser. 
  45. ↑ "CURRICULUM VITAE: Priyamvada Natarajan". Yale CampusPress. Yale University. https://campuspress.yale.edu/priya/cv/cv2/. 
  46. ↑ Wuppuluri, Shyam; Wu, Dali (22 November 2019). On Art and Science: Tango of an Eternally Inseparable Duo. ISBN 9783030275761. https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030275761. 
  47. ↑ "M.J. Rees". Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. https://www.knaw.nl/en/members/foreign-members/4688. 
  48. ↑ "Foreign Honorary Members". Bilim Akademisi. http://en.bilimakademisi.org/uyeler/foreign-honorary-members-of-the-science-academy. 
  49. ↑ Martin Rees tipped to head Royal Society, bbc.co.uk, 29 March 2005; accessed 31 August 2014.
  50. ↑ Martin Rees nominated for presidency of the Royal Society, royalsoc.ac.uk, 29 March 2005; accessed 31 August 2014.
  51. ↑ Martin Rees wins controversial Templeton Prize, guardian.co.uk, 6 April 2011; accessed 31 August 2014.
  52. ↑ "State: Crown Office". The London Gazette (57753): p. 11653. 9 September 2005. https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/57753. 
  53. ↑ Sir Martin Rees appointed to the House of Lords , admin.cam.ac.uk, 1 August 2005; accessed 31 August 2014.
  54. ↑ Professor Sir Martin Rees wins Crafoord Prize , admin.cam.ac.uk, 10 February 2005; accessed 31 August 2014.
  55. ↑ No. 52935. 29 May 1992. p. 9177. https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/52935/page/9177 
  56. ↑ "Honorary doctorates - Uppsala University, Sweden". http://www.uu.se/en/about-uu/traditions/prizes/honorary-doctorates/. 
  57. ↑ "Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement". American Academy of Achievement. https://achievement.org/our-history/golden-plate-awards/#science-exploration. 
  58. ↑ "Albert Einstein World Award of Science 2003". http://www.consejoculturalmundial.org/winners-science-martinrees.php. 
  59. ↑ No. 57753. 9 September 2005. p. 11653. https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/57753/page/11653 
  60. ↑ No. 58379. 29 June 2007. p. 9395. https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/58379/page/9395 
  61. ↑ Cressey, Daniel (2011). "Martin Rees takes Templeton Prize" (in en). Nature. doi:10.1038/news.2011.208. 
  62. ↑ Dirac Medal of the ICTP - The Medallists
  63. ↑ "European Astronomical Society 2020 prizes". 6 March 2020. https://eas.unige.ch/documents/eas_prizes_2020.pdf. 
  64. ↑ "AAS Fellows". AAS. https://aas.org/grants-and-prizes/aas-fellows. 
  65. ↑ "Templeton Report: Martin J. Rees Wins 2011 Templeton Prize". https://www.templeton.org/templeton_report/20110420/index.html. 
  66. ↑ Sample, Ian (6 April 2011). "Martin Rees: I've got no religious beliefs at all – interview". https://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/apr/06/astronomer-royal-martin-rees-interview. 
  67. ↑ "Can humanity survive the future?". Financial Times. October 2018. https://www.ft.com/content/3ebb3122-cb11-11e8-8d0b-a6539b949662. "Rees, while stating he is an atheist, declares that he shares a sense of "mystery" with those who believe in God." 
  68. ↑ "Martin Rees: 'We shouldn't attach any weight to what Hawking says" (in en). The Independent. 27 September 2010. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/martin-rees-we-shouldnt-attach-any-weight-to-what-hawking-says-about-god-2090421.html. 
  69. ↑ Radford, Tim (2 December 2005). "Guardian profile: Martin Rees". The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/dec/02/highereducationprofile.research. 


Professional and academic associations
Preceded by
Robert May 		60th President of the Royal Society
2005 – 2010 		Succeeded by
Paul Nurse
Preceded by
Ken Pounds 		78th President of the Royal Astronomical Society
1992 – 1994 		Succeeded by
Carole Jordan
Academic offices
Preceded by
Amartya Sen 		37th Master of Trinity College, Cambridge
2004 – 2012 		Succeeded by
Greg Winter
Preceded by
The Lord Goodlad 		Gentlemen
Baron Rees of Ludlow




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