Lisa Kewley

Lisa Jennifer Kewley is a Professor and Associate Director at the Research School for Astronomy & Astrophysics at the Australian National University College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences.[1] Specialising in galaxy evolution, she won the Annie Jump Cannon Award in Astronomy in 2005 for her studies of oxygen in galaxies, and the Newton Lacy Pierce Prize in Astronomy in 2008. In 2014 she was elected a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.

Life

Kewley was raised in South Australia. Her parents encouraged engagement with the sciences and she was influenced by a high school physics teacher, and participation at a school stargazing camp, to become interested in astronomy.[2] After school, she enrolled in a Bachelor of Science at the Adelaide University, graduating with a BSc(Hons) in astrophysics.[3] She was awarded her doctorate by the Australian National University in 2002.[4]

Although her doctorate was awarded in 2002, her work had already attracted attention, and in 2001 she moved to work at Johns Hopkins University in the United States.[2] In that year she co-authored a paper in The Astrophysical Journal, called "Theoretical Modeling of Starburst Galaxies",[5] which as of 2013 was her most-cited publication.[6]

She also made a short trip back to Australia in 2001, to marry her husband Reuben.[2] After receiving her doctorate, Kewley moved to the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Boston on a CfA fellowship, working on the formation and evolution of stars.[3] Her mentors there included American astrophysicist Margaret Geller.[2] Awarded a Hubble postdoctoral fellowship in 2004, she continued her work at the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawai'i. Kewley was part of a team that used re-analysis of a Hubble telescope image to identify a distant galaxy 9.3 billion light years distant.[7] She then worked with the W. M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, analysing data on the oxygen content of this and other galaxies of different ages, contributing to the understanding of their evolution. For this research she in 2005 was awarded the Annie Jump Cannon Award in Astronomy,[4] which recognises outstanding research by women astronomers within five years of receiving their doctorates.[8] There was further recognition of her work in 2008, when Kewley won the Newton Lacy Pierce Prize in Astronomy, awarded by the American Astronomical Society.[9] The award was for her research "that has shown how the properties of a galaxy depend on how long ago it was formed".[10] Her work studied the variation in properties of old and new galaxies, including oxygen richness, star formation rate, and the characteristics of the galaxy's nucleus.[10]

In 2007, Harvey Raymond Butcher had taken over as Director the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Australian National University. He recruited two "top mid-career astronomers" to return to the university: one of these was Kewley, who was appointed as professor in 2011.[11]

In 2014, Kewley was elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.[12]

Kewley is married with a son (born 2008) and a daughter (born 2011), both born when she was living and working in Hawai'i.[2]

References

  1. ↑ "Professor Lisa Kewley". ANU Researchers. Australian National University. 2014. Retrieved 31 May 2014.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 "In pursuit of two goals: An award-winning astronomer who needs both career and family". Gender Institute. Australian National University. 7 November 2012. Retrieved 31 May 2014.
  3. 1 2 "Lisa Kewley". Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawai'i. 2006. Retrieved 31 May 2014.
  4. 1 2 "Kewley Wins National Astronomy Award". Nā Kilo Hōkū (Newsletter of the Institute of Astronomy, University of Hawai'i (18). 2006.
  5. ↑ Kewley, L. J.; Dopita, M. A.; Sutherland, R. S.; Heisler, C. A.; Trevena, J. (2001). "Theoretical Modeling of Starburst Galaxies". The Astrophysical Journal 556 (1): 121–140. arXiv:astro-ph/0106324. Bibcode:2001ApJ...556..121K. doi:10.1086/321545.
  6. ↑ "Lisa Kewley citation indices". Google Scholar. 2013. Retrieved 31 May 2014.
  7. ↑ Ferrara, Michele; Marcel Clemens (2 June 2011). "Sp1149 and the perfect gravitational lens". Astrofilo. Astro Publishing. Retrieved 31 May 2014.
  8. ↑ "Annie J. Cannon Award in Astronomy". American Astronomical Society. 2014. Retrieved 1 June 2014.
  9. ↑ "Newton Lacy Pierce Prize in Astronomy". American Astronomical Society. 2014. Retrieved 31 May 2014.
  10. 1 2 "UH Astronomers Win American Astronomical Society Prizes". Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawai'i. 4 February 2008. Retrieved 31 May 2014.
  11. ↑ Bhathal, Ragbir; Ralph Sutherland; Harvey Butcher (2013). Mt Stromlo Observatory: From Bush Observatory to the Nobel Prize. CSIRO Publishing. p. 260. ISBN 1486300766.
  12. ↑ "Fellows elected in 2014". Australian Academy of Sciences. 2014. Retrieved 25 May 2014.

External links

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