Autor/-in: John Etienne Beckman
John Beckman is Emeritus Research Professor of Astrophysics at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias. A graduate of Oxford University in Theoretical Physics, he read for his D.Phil. in Astrophysics at the same university, where he later was awarded the higher doctorate of D.Sc. After a postdoc at University of California Berkeley he took a post at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, (Caltech) where he was Project Scientist for the infrared radiometer on the Mariner 6 probe to Mars. Returning to England he lectured at Queen Mary University of London, joining a pioneer group in millimetre wave astronomy, where as well as working in solar physics his group was the first to measure the peak in the Cosmic Microwave Background spectrum, almost a decade before the COBE measurement from space. During this period he participated in observing the chromosphere from the Concorde aircraft, during the longest total solar eclipse in history, of 74 minutes’ duration. After a period at the EuropeanSpace Agency’s ESTEC facility he was invited to be the first research director of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, where he has been working ever since.
His interests have moved outwards from planets, via the Sun, to stars and finally galaxies. His present research is on the structure and evolution of galaxies using the wide range of instruments available at the Canary Island Observatories.
He has directed 35 PhD theses and a similar number of MSc dissertations, and has over 650 entries in the ADS astronomy publications website. His outreach activities have included hundreds of lectures to schools, universities, and amateur astronomy clubs in a dozen countries. He is the scientific director, and lecturer, at the “Jornadas Astronomicas de Almería” which, starting in 2005, has brought high level popular astronomy to the public at an annual event at which, among others, 7 Nobel Laureates and 7 ESA and NASA astronauts have given lectures.
His research experience is unusually varied, The “Festschift” given for John to celebrate his 40 years in astronomy was entitled “Pathways through an Eclectic Universe”. This wide range of knowledge makes him a suitable author for a book on Multimessenger Astronomy, in which he aims to incorporate the newest ways of observing the Universe, via neutrinos and gravitational waves, into the panoramic range of observations made using the full span of the electromagnetic spectrum.
