The development of the cosmological standard model
Prof. Simon White,
Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics, wins the Gold Medal 2006 of the
Royal Astronomical Society
On May 12, the Royal
Astronomical Society of the United Kingdom has honored astronomers
with its 2006 awards. The top award, the Gold Medal, was received by
Professor Simon D. M. White for his pioneering research on the
evolution of cosmic structure from the earliest times to the present
epoch. This work was instrumental for developing the cold dark matter
model with a cosmological constant (ΛCDM), which has now become the
standard paradigm for describing the Universe, and represents one of
the greatest achievements in astronomy over the past three decades.
According to this
model, initial perturbations were seeded in the otherwise smooth and
featureless Big Bang by quantum processes at very early times. As the
universe expanded, these fluctuations were amplified by gravity until
they eventually collapsed back on themselves to form the galaxies, the
galaxy clusters and the larger structures that we observe in the
Universe today. As one of his many key contributions, Professor White
developed computer simulations to show how the non-linear
gravitational evolution of dark matter particles grows the rich and
complex tapestry of cosmic structure. A recent highlight of this work
is the creation of the Millennium Simulation, which computed the
evolution of more than 10 billion particles of matter, tracking the
formation of about 20 million galaxies and their large-scale structure
in unprecedented detail, throughout a piece of the universe more than
2-billion light-years across.
Professor Simon White
is director at the Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics in
Garching. His 240 papers in the refereed astronomical literature
have been cited more than 25000 times by other researchers,
making him at present the most cited astrophysicist in the world.
Links:
Royal Astronomical Society
Millennium Simulation
Previous RAS Gold Medal Winners in Astronomy and Geophysics
Further information can be obtained from:
Dr. Hans-Thomas Janka
Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik, Garching
Tel.: 089 30000-2228
Fax.: 089 30000-2235
E-Mail: thj  mpa-garching.mpg.de
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