Dale Frail

Dale Frail

Dale A. Frail is an astronomer working at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Socorro, New Mexico. He was born in Canada, spent much of his childhood in Europe, and his professional career has been based in the United States.

Contents

Career

Frail received his university education in Canada: first an undergraduate degree in Physics from Acadia University in Nova Scotia, followed by M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Astrophysics from the University of Toronto. In 1989 he moved to the United States as an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow. After completing a prized Jansky Postdoctoral Fellowship[1] in 1993, he joined the research staff of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, where he remains today.

He is the author of well over 200 peer-reviewed research papers,[2] including some 30 articles in the prestigious journal Nature. He has made contributions to numerous sub-fields of astrophysics including gamma-ray bursts, extrasolar planets, soft gamma-ray repeaters, the interstellar medium, pulsars, masers and supernova remnants. To the lay public he is best known for discoveries in extrasolar planets and gamma-ray bursts. In 2010, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.[3] In August 2011, he was appointed as NRAO's Assistant Director for the Expanded Very Large Array and the Very Long Baseline Array, and site director for New Mexico operations.[4]

Key Discoveries

In early 1992, Frail and Polish astronomer Aleksander Wolszczan announced their discovery[5] of the existence of two planets and a possible third around the pulsar PSR B1257+12. Their discovery was confirmed in mid-1992. In addition to being the first confirmed discovery of pulsar planets, the find is also generally considered to be the first confirmed discovery of extrasolar planets of any kind.

Beginning in 1997, Frail was part of a Caltech-NRAO team that helped unravel the long-standing mystery of the origin of gamma-ray bursts. They used an optical spectrum taken with the Keck Telescope toward the optical afterglow of GRB 970508 to establish that gamma-ray bursts were at cosmological distances.[6] They then used the Very Large Array radio telescope discovery of radio afterglow emission from this same burst to measure the object's size and infer that the source was expanding relativistically.[7] These two observations have remained cornerstones in the cosmological fireball model for gamma-ray bursts.[8][9] In 2009 Thomson ISI listed Frail as one of the top three most cited researchers in the field of gamma-ray bursts over the last decade.[10]

There are many popular science accounts of the discovery of extra-solar planets as well as those of gamma-ray bursts and their afterglows. Links to a few of these can be found below.

References

  1. ^ http://www.nrao.edu/admin/do/jansky-postdocs.shtml NRAO Jansky Postdoctoral Fellowships
  2. ^ "Dale Frail", Partial list from the NASA ADS database
  3. ^ http://www.gf.org/fellows/16760-dale-a-frail John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow Biography
  4. ^ http://www.dchieftain.com/dc/index.php/news/3635-new-assistant-director-named-at-evla-.html
  5. ^ Wolszczan, A.; Frail, D. A. (1992). "A planetary system around the millisecond pulsar PSR1257+12". Nature 355 (6356): 145–147. Bibcode 1992Natur.355..145W. doi:10.1038/355145a0. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v355/n6356/abs/355145a0.html. 
  6. ^ Metzger, M. R.; Djorgovski, S. G.; Kulkarni, S. R.; Steidel, C. C.; Adelberger, K. L.; Frail, D. A.; Costa, E.; Frontera, F. (1997). "Spectral constraints on the redshift of the optical counterpart to the γ-ray burst of 8 May 1997". Nature 387 (6636): 878–880. Bibcode 1997Natur.387..879M. doi:10.1038/43132. 
  7. ^ Frail, D. A.; Kulkarni, S. R.; Nicastro, L.; Feroci, M.; Taylor, G. B. (1997). "The radio afterglow from the γ-ray burst of 8 May 1997". Nature 389 (6648): 261–263. Bibcode 1997Natur.389..261F. doi:10.1038/38451. 
  8. ^ Piran, T. (1999). "Gamma-ray bursts and the fireball model". Physics Reports 314 (6): 575–667. arXiv:astro-ph/9810256. doi:10.1016/S0370-1573(98)00127-6. 
  9. ^ Frail, D. A.; Waxman, E.; Kulkarni, S. R.; (2000). "A 450 Day Light Curve of the Radio Afterglow of GRB 970508: Fireball Calorimetry". The Astrophysical Journal 537 (1): 191–204. Bibcode 2000ApJ...537..191F. doi:10.1086/309024. PMID 309024. http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/0004-637X/537/1/191/50817.text.html. 
  10. ^ http://sciencewatch.com/ana/st/gamma/authors/ Special Topics Analysis of Gamma-ray Burst (GRB) Research

External links


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужно решить контрольную?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Dale Frail — Dale A. Frail (* 1961) ist ein kanadischer Radioastronom. Frail arbeitet für das National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Socorro, New Mexico. Er erhielt seinen Ph.D. von der University of Toronto 1989. Neben seiner Suche nach planetaren… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Dale A. Frail — ist ein kanadischer Radioastronom. Frail arbeitet für das National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Socorro, New Mexico. Er erhielt seinen Ph.D. von der University of Toronto 1989. Neben seiner Suche nach planetaren Körpern außerhalb des… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Frail — Dale A. Frail ist ein kanadischer Radioastronom. Frail arbeitet für das National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Socorro, New Mexico. Er erhielt seinen Ph.D. von der University of Toronto 1989. Neben seiner Suche nach planetaren Körpern… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • GRB 970508 — Luminiscencia visible de GRB 970508 observada un mes después de la detección del brote …   Wikipedia Español

  • GRB 970508 — Lueur optique résiduelle du sursaut gamma GRB 970508 prise un mois après la détection de son explosion, le 8 mai 1997 à 21 H 24 UTC par les satellites BeppoSAX, BATSE et Ulysses. GRB 970508 est un sursaut gamma (GRB) détecté le… …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Extrasolar planet — Planet Fomalhaut b (inset against Fomalhaut s interplanetary dust cloud) imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope s coronagraph (NASA photo) …   Wikipedia

  • Wolszczan — Aleksander Wolszczan 2006 Aleksander Wolszczan (  anhören?/i) (* 1946 in Szczecinek, Polen) ist ein polnischer Astronom. Er ist der Entdecker der ersten Exoplaneten bzw. Pulsarplaneten …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Pulsar planet — Pulsar planets are planets that are found orbiting pulsars, or rapidly rotating neutron stars. The first such planet to be discovered was around a millisecond pulsar and was the first extrasolar planet to be discovered. Pulsar planetsPulsar… …   Wikipedia

  • Liste der Biografien/Fra — Biografien: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Aleksander Wolszczan — Infobox Scientist name = Aleksander Wolszczan |300px image width = 200px caption = Aleksander Wolszczan at Piwnice radio observatory birth date = April 29, 1946 birth place = Szczecinek, Poland death date = death place = nationality = Polish… …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”