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Donald Lynden-Bell

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Donald Lynden-Bell
Born(1935-04-05)5 April 1935
Dover, United Kingdom[1]
Died6 February 2018(2018-02-06) (aged 82)[2]
Cambridge, United Kingdom
Alma materUniversity of Cambridge
AwardsKarl Schwarzschild Medal (1983)

Eddington Medal (1984)
Brouwer Award (1991)
Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1993)
Bruce Medal (1998)
John J. Carty Award for the Advancement of Science (2000)
Henry Norris Russell Lectureship (2000)

Kavli Prize for Astrophysics (2008)
Scientific career
FieldsAstrophysics
InstitutionsUniversity of Cambridge
Thesis Stellar and galactic dynamics  (1961)
Doctoral advisorLeon Mestel
Doctoral studentsSimon White
Somak Raychaudhury

Donald Lynden-Bell CBE FRS (5 April 1935 – 6 February 2018) was a British theoretical astrophysicist. He was the first to determine that galaxies contain supermassive black holes at their centres, and that such black holes power quasars. Lynden-Bell was President of the Royal Astronomical Society (1985–87) and received numerous awards for his work, including the inaugural Kavli Prize for Astrophysics. He worked at the University of Cambridge for his entire career, where he was the first director of its Institute of Astronomy.

Biography

Lynden-Bell was born in Dover, Kent, into a military family. His father, Lt Col Lachlan Lynden-Bell, fought on the Western Front and in the Middle East during World War I and had received a Military Cross.[3][4] He attended Marlborough College before going being admitted to Clare College, Cambridge in 1953.[5] After earning a distinction in the Mathematical Tripos,[5] Lynden-Bell went on to doctoral studies, which he completed in 1960[6]. In 1962, he published research with Olin Eggen and Allan Sandage[7] arguing that the Milky Way originated through the dynamic collapse of a single large gas cloud.[8] In 1969 he published his theory that quasars are powered by massive black holes accreting material. From counting dead quasars, he deduced that most massive galaxies have black holes at their centres.[9]

In 1972, he became the first directory of the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, when it formed from the merger of the Institute of Theoretical Astrophyics and the Cambridge Observatories.[5]

In the 1980s, he was a member of a group of astronomers known as the 'Seven Samurai' (with Sandra Faber, David Burstein, Alan Dressler, Roger Davies, Roberto Terlevich, and Gary A. Wegner) who postulated the existence of the Great Attractor, a huge, diffuse region of material around 250 million light-years away that results in the observed motion of our local galaxies.[10]

Lynden-Bell developed theory for the relaxation of a system of particles in changing potential field known as "violent relaxation." Violent relaxation has many applications in dynamical astronomy, affecting the orbits of stars within star clusters and galaxies.[11] Lynden-Bell is also known for the development of the theory of the "gravothermal catastrophe," a phenomenon in star clusters that is the result of the negative heat capacity of gravitational systems. The catastrophe occurs when the core of a cluster shrinks and heats up, causing it to transfer energy to stars in the cluster's halo, leading the cluster core to collapse.[12]

Lynden-Bell, Roger Griffin, Neville Woolf, and Wallace L. W. Sargent were in the 2015 documentary film Star Men that covered some of their professional accomplishments at their fiftieth reunion to redo a memorable hike.[13]

His research in the last years of his life mainly focused on astrophysical jets and general relativity.[14]

Personal life and death

Lynden-Bell was married to Ruth Lynden-Bell, a professor of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, on 1 July 1961.[15][3] They had two children, Marion and Edward.[15][16]

Lynden-Bell died at his home in Cambridge on 6 February 2018, at the age of 82.[2] He had a stroke in the months preceding his death, and never fully recovered.[17]

Honours

Awards

Named after him

References

  1. ^ "The Astronomers". Star Men. Inigo Athenaeum Enterprise Inc. 2015. Retrieved 25 October 2016.
  2. ^ a b "Prof. Donald Lynden-Bell". Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge. 6 February 2018. Retrieved 6 February 2018.
  3. ^ a b c "2008 Kavli Prize Laureates in Astrophysics". www.kavliprize.org. 28 August 2008.
  4. ^ "Donald Lynden-Bell". The Times. 9 February 2018. p. 53.
  5. ^ a b c Lynden-Bell, Donald (2010), "Searching for Insight", Annual Reviews in Astronomy and Astrophysics, 48: 1, Bibcode:2010ARA&A..48....1L
  6. ^ Lynden-Bell, Donald (1960). Stellar and Galactic Dynamics (PhD). University of Cambridge.
  7. ^ Lynden-Bell, Donald; Schweizer, François (2012). "Allan Rex Sandage. 18 June 1926 -- 13 November 2010". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 58: 245. doi:10.1098/rsbm.2011.0021.
  8. ^ Eggen, O. J.; Lynden-Bell, D.; Sandage, A. R. (1962). "Evidence from the motions of old stars that the Galaxy collapsed". The Astrophysical Journal. 136: 748. Bibcode:1962ApJ...136..748E. doi:10.1086/147433.
  9. ^ Lynden-Bell, D. (1969). "Galactic Nuclei as Collapsed Old Quasars". Nature. 223 (5207): 690. Bibcode:1969Natur.223..690L. doi:10.1038/223690a0.
  10. ^ Dennis Overbye, Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos, 1st. ed., p. 410, Harper Collins, 1991
  11. ^ Lynden-Bell, D. (1967). "Statistical mechanics of violent relaxation in stellar systems". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 136: 101. Bibcode:1967MNRAS.136..101L. doi:10.1093/mnras/136.1.101.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)
  12. ^ Lynden-Bell, D.; Wood, Roger (1968). "The gravo-thermal catastrophe in isothermal spheres and the onset of red-giant structure for stellar systems". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 138: 495. Bibcode:1968MNRAS.138..495L. doi:10.1093/mnras/138.4.495.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)
  13. ^ Bradshaw, Peter (19 November 2015). "Star Men review – desert road trip, space odyssey". the Guardian. Retrieved 7 February 2018.
  14. ^ "Donald Lynden-Bell, British astronomer - Stock Image C020/7225 - Science Photo Library". www.sciencephoto.com. Retrieved 7 February 2018.
  15. ^ a b "Ruth Marion Lynden-Bell". Prabook.
  16. ^ "Professor emeritus Ruth Lynden-Bell". AcademiaNet.
  17. ^ "R.I.P. Donald Lynden-Bell (1935-2018)". WordPress.
  18. ^ "Recipients of the Karl Schwarzschild Medal — English". Astronomische Gesellschaft. Retrieved 7 February 2018.
  19. ^ Hide, R. (1984), "Presentation of the Eddington Medal to Lynden-Bell 1984FEB10", Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, 25: 231, Bibcode:1984QJRAS..25..231H
  20. ^ "Donald Lynden-Bell received the 1991 Dirk Brouwer Award of the American Astronomical Society.", Physics Today, 44: Q82, 1991, Bibcode:1991PhT....44Q..82.
  21. ^ "Gold Medal to Lynden-Bell", Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, 34: 273, 1993, Bibcode:1993QJRAS..34..273.
  22. ^ "Past Recipients of the Catherine Wolfe Bruce Gold Medal « Astronomical Society". Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Retrieved 7 February 2018.
  23. ^ "John J. Carty Award for the Advancement of Science". National Academy of Sciences. Archived from the original on 29 December 2010. Retrieved 15 February 2011. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  24. ^ "Henry Norris Russell Lectureship | American Astronomical Society". American Astronomical Society. Retrieved 7 February 2018.
  25. ^ "Gruppe 2: Fysikkfag (herunder astronomi, fysikk og geofysikk)" (in Norwegian). Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. Retrieved 7 October 2010.
  26. ^ "IAU Minor Planet Center: (18235) Lynden-Bell". Retrieved 7 February 2018.
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