| Bryan Malcolm Gaensler | |
|---|---|
| Born | 4 July 1973 Sydney, Australia |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Fields | Physicist (astrophysics) |
| Alma mater | University of Sydney |
Bryan Malcolm Gaensler (born 4 July 1973) is an Australian astronomer and former Young Australian of the Year, currently based at the University of Sydney. He is best known for his work on magnetars, supernova remnants and magnetic fields.
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Gaensler was born in Sydney, Australia. He attended Sydney Grammar School, and then studied at the University of Sydney from where he was awarded a perfect grade of 100 for his honours thesis, and henceforth graduated with a B.Sc. with first class honours in physics (1995), followed by a PhD in astrophysics (1999).
From 1998 to 2001, Gaensler held a Hubble Fellowship at the Center for Space Research of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2001 he moved to the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory as a Clay Fellow. In 2002, he took up an appointment as an assistant professor in the Department of Astronomy at Harvard University.
In 2006, he moved back to Sydney as an Australian Research Council Federation Fellow in the School of Physics at the University of Sydney.
In 1997, Gaensler showed that many supernova remnants are aligned with the magnetic field of the Milky Way like "cosmic compasses". [1] In 2000, he and Dale Frail calculated that some pulsars are much older than previously believed. [2] In 2004, Gaensler used the Chandra X-ray Observatory to make the first detailed study of the behavior of high-energy particles around a fast moving pulsar. [3]
In 2005, Gaensler was reported to have solved the mystery of why some supernova explosions form magnetars while others form ordinary pulsars. [4] Later that year, he and his colleagues observed the brightest explosion ever observed in the history of astronomy, resulting from a sudden pulse of gamma rays from the magnetar SGR 1806-20. [5] In 2005, Gaensler also reported puzzling new observations of the Large Magellanic Cloud, showing that powerful but unknown forces were at work in maintaining this galaxy's magnetic field. [6]
Gaensler was formerly the international project scientist for the Square Kilometre Array, a next-generation radio telescope.
In 2011, Gaensler published his first book, Extreme Cosmos
| Preceded by Tan Le |
Young Australian of the Year 1999 |
Succeeded by Ian Thorpe |