Roger Davies

Roger Davies is the Philip Wetton Professor of Astrophysics at Oxford University and a Student of Christ Church. He is Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and of the Institute of Physics and was recently elected the Fellowship of University College London. Professor Davies has pioneered the use of a new class of astronomical spectrograph to measure the masses and ages of galaxies, as well as search for black holes in their nuclei. He started research working on galaxy dynamics in Cambridge in the 1970s after which he moved to California, returning to Cambridge as a JRF at Christ's College. He then spent 6 years on the staff of the US National Observatory in Tucson, Arizona. As part of the "7 Samurai'' team he worked out a new way of measuring the distances to galaxies and discovered the "Great Attractor'', a huge concentration of galaxy clusters in the southern sky. He moved to Oxford in 1988 to lead the UK's participation in the construction of the 8m Gemini telescopes, in Hawaii and Chile. In 1994 he took up the post of Professor of Astronomy at Durham University returning to Oxford in 2002. His research interests centre on cosmology and how galaxies form and evolve. He has a longstanding interest in astronomical instruments and telescopes and has pioneered the use of a new class of astronomical spectrograph to measure the masses and ages of galaxies, as well as search for black holes in their nuclei.
He served as the President of the Royal Astronomical Society from 2010-2012. Professor Davies has published over 150 papers.