Carl Eugene Heiles (born 1939) is an American astrophysicist noted for his contribution to the understanding of diffuse interstellar matter through observational radio astronomy.
Contents |
Heiles was born in Toledo, Ohio.[1] He did his undergraduate work at Cornell University, receiving a degree in engineering physics, and then received his doctorate in 1966 from Princeton University in astrophysical sciences. He has worked at the University of California, Berkeley since, and is currently a professor of astronomy.
While Heiles was still a graduate student at Princeton, he wrote a paper with Michel Hénon about a third integral of motion in axisymmetric potentials, from which the Hénon-Heiles equation is drawn.[2][3] Though his paper with Hénon has been cited more than all but one of his other papers,[4] most of Heiles' work has been in the field of radio astronomy. Heiles was part of the team which discovered the first millisecond pulsar, PSR B1937+21.[5] Heiles has also been pivotal in understanding the diffuse gas in the interstellar medium, primarily through observation of the hydrogen line. His role in this field is such that a conference at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico on diffuse matter was held in honor of Heiles' 65th birthday.[6] Observations of this gas has helped develop a better understanding of star formation and galactic gravitational and magnetic fields.