Monthly Meeting September – The Accelerating Universe: A personal journey with Professor Brian J. Boyle

The Auckland Astronomical Society are privileged to host this talk for the September monthly meeting.

Professor Brian J. Boyle.

From my perspective as a team member, I recount the early days of The Supernova Cosmology Project which lead to the discovery of the accelerating Universe in 1998. I discuss the many observational challenges faced and reflect on lessons learned for ambitious projects in a skeptical community.

Now retired and settled in New Zealand, Dr Brian J. Boyle is a Scottish astrophysicist who was based in Australia since 1996. His primary research interests are in the fields of quasars, active galaxies and cosmology.

He was involved in science-direction setting in Australia for over 15 years, contributing the mid-term review in 2000, leading the development of the Australian Astronomy Decadal Plan ] and facilitating the development of the Optical and Radio Astronomy Investment Plan for the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy in 2007.

He was awarded the Centenary Medal for services to Australian Astronomy in 2003 and elected as a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2006.

Boyle was CSIRO SKA Director as well as the Project Director for the Australia–New Zealand SKA bid. In these roles he played a major part both nationally and internationally in the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) program; a project to build the world’s largest cm-wavelength radio telescope.

Some career highlights:

Conceived and built the Australian SKA Pathfinder.
Secured Australia’s co-hosting of the international SKA project.
Awarded Public Service Medal in 2012 Australia Day Honours for this work
Awarded CSIRO Chairman’s medal in 2016.
Conceived and implemented the external Instrumentation program at the AAO.
Positioned AAO as most cited ground-based astronomical telescope in 1998-2003.
Awarded Centenary Medal in 2003 for this work
Founding Member of the Supernova Cosmology Team that discovered cosmic acceleration
– Nobel Prize for Physics awarded to Team Leader (Saul Perlmutter) in 2011.
– Awarded Gruber Prize for Cosmology in 2009.
– Awarded Breakthrough Prize for Fundamental Physics in 2014.