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Guinevere Kauffmann is known for her pioneering work to develop
theoretical models for the formation and evolution of the galaxy
population as a whole. Such semi-analytic models have become the
primary method for comparing the systematic properties of galaxies in
large observational surveys with expectations based on the current
standard Cold Dark Matter paradigm for the growth of cosmic structure.
Over the last decade she has also played a leading role in devising
analysis methods for extracting quantitative information about the
physical processes driving galaxy evolution from the observational
data provided by modern large-scale surveys, notably the Sloan Digital
Sky Survey, but also smaller, specially designed surveys, which Dr
Kauffmann and her team have carried out themselves.
Dr Kauffmann's research has been well recognised outside the Max
Planck Society. In 2002 she was awarded the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize
and in 2007 she received the 2.5 million Euro
Gottfried-Wilhelm-Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation, the
most prestigious prize in German research. She was elected to the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009, to the German National
Academy of Science, Leopoldina, in 2010, and to the US National
Academy of Science in 2012. In 2010, Bavarian Minster President Horst
Seehofer awarded her the Distinguished Service Cross of the Federal
Republic of Germany for her services to science.
Guinevere Kauffmann joins Eiichiro Komatsu as the second of a new
generation of directors at MPA who should assure the institute's
scientific future well into the coming decades.
Contact:
Prof. Dr. Simon D.M. White
Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics
Phone: +49 89 30000-2211
E-mail: swhite mpa-garching.mpg.de
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