James Binney

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James Binney, FRS, FInstP (born 1950) is a British astrophysicist. He is presently a Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford, where he holds a position in the Theoretical Physics sub-department, as well as a Professorial Fellowship at Merton College. Binney's primary contributions lie across the spectrum of theoretical galactic and extragalactic astrophysics. He is, however, somewhat polymathic and has made contributions to fields that might traditionally be considered disparate from astrophysics.

[edit] Education and Career

Binney took a first class BA in the Mathematical Tripos at the University of Cambridge in 1971. He then moved to the University of Oxford, reading for a DPhil at Magdalen College under the tutelage of Dennis Sciama, which he completed in 1975. Binney then moved through several post-doctoral positions, including time at Princeton University, before taking a permanent position as a University Lecturer and Fellow and Tutor in Physics at Merton College in 1981. He was awarded the Maxwell Prize and Medal by the Institute of Physics in 1986.

Binney was subsequently made Ad Hominem Reader in Theoretical Physics in 1991, and in 1996 he was made a Professor of Physics. In 2000 he was granted a Fellowship of the Royal Society and a Fellowship of the Institute of Physics. He received the Brouwer Award of the American Astronomical Society in 2003.

[edit] Research Interests

Binney's recent research interests have tended towards:

  • Physics of cooling flows and the processes of AGN feedback;
  • Supernova disruption of galactic disk gas;
  • Dynamics of galaxies, including those of the Milky Way;
  • Galaxy and orbit modelling, including development of torus modelling techniques.

[edit] Publications

Binney has published some hundreds of articles in peer-reviewed journals, as well as several textbooks, including Galactic Dynamics, which has long been considered the standard work of reference in its field:

  • Galactic Astronomy, by Dimitri Mihalas and James Binney, Freeman 1981.
  • Galactic Astronomy (2nd ed.), by James Binney and Michael Merrifield, Princeton University Press, 1998.
  • Galactic Dynamics, by James Binney and Scott Tremaine, Princeton University Press, 1988.
  • Galactic Dynamics (2nd ed.), by James Binney and Scott Tremaine, Princeton University Press, 2008.
  • Pick for Humans by James Binney & Mark Newman, McGraw-Hill, 1990.
  • The Theory of Critical Phenomena by J. J. Binney, N. J. Dowrick, A. J. Fisher & M. E. J. Newman, Oxford University Press, 1992.