Monthly Meeting August – Building on the shoulders of giantesses

An often used quote by Isaac Newton is that “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants”. In this talk I’ll discuss how the current work on understanding the sources of gravitational wave transients made when black-hole and neutron stars merger is built on the shoulders of giantesses. These women astronomers, Annie Jump Cannon, Henrietta Leavitt, Antonia Maury, Cecilia Payne, Erika Böhm-Vitense and Beatrice Tinsley made vital contributions to our understandings of stars that are key to unlocking the secrets of the Universe.

Professor Jan Eldridge, Head of Department of Physics University of Auckland.

I obtained my MA and MSci degrees from the University of Cambridge in 2001. I stayed at the University to study for my PhD in astrophysics at the Institute of Astronomy, graduating in 2005. After this I undertook postdoctoral research at the Institut d’Astrophysics de Paris, Queen’s University Belfast and the Institute of Astronomy. In 2011 I was appointed as a Lecturer of Astrophysics at The University of Auckland.

My research is focused upon the lives and deaths of stars. Most of my work involves the suite of computer codes I have created, the Binary Population and Spectral Synthesis code (BPASS, bpass.auckland.ac.nz). Using BPASS I study stars, supernovae and gravitational wave sources in our own Galaxy out to the edge of the observable Universe.