Glenn White

Glenn J. White is currently Professor of Astronomy at the Open University, UK, and Research Group Leader of the Astronomy Group at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. He currently carries out research on star formation and on exoplanets.

cientific career

After studying radio astronomy at Jodrell Bank Observatory, the University of Manchester and at The University of Kent (1969-1972), he worked for a short period in x-ray astronomy at the University of Leicester, before joining Queen Mary College, University of London in 1976. He was Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of London (1993-2000), Professor of Space Science at the University of Kent (2000-2005), and is currently Professor of Astronomy at the Open University, a post held jointly with The Rutherford Appleton Laboratory since 2005. He has also held visiting positions at The University of Tokyo (1987), the University of Stockholm (1998) and the University of Cambridge (1999). He was involved in the early development of astronomical millimetre and submillimetre wavelength astronomy in the 1970s and 1980s.

He is currently working on problems in star formation and submillimeter wavelength spectroscopy studies of the gas that forms stars, and has also studied the interaction of radio signals with plants and biological material. He is currently developing space missions to detect the atmospheres of Earth-like extrasolar planets, such as the European Space Agency's Darwin Mission, and the Japanese Space Agency's [http://akari.open.ac.uk AKARI mission, which was successfully launched in February 2006, and the Herschel Space Observatory.

Awards

*The Kelvin Lectureship in Physics, of The British Association, 1991 (awarded for Popularisation of Science)
*Daiwa Adrian Prize, 2004 (Co-holder for work on the Japanese AKARI Space mission) http://www.dajf.org.uk/page_e.asp?Section=Grants&ID=262

TV, Radio

An occasional contributor to TV and radio, recent appearances can be seen on the: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/check/science/space/realmedia/skyatnight_dec06?size=16x9&bgc=000000&nbram=1&bbram=1 [Sky At Night] ] [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article1719516.ece [Sunday Times] ] and [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6589157.stm BBC.

External links

* [http://physics.open.ac.uk/~gjwhite/index.htm Home page]