Professor James Binney has been awarded the Royal Astronomical Society’s Gold Medal for his lifetime achievements in the study of the structure and evolution of galaxies. The Gold Medal is RAS’ highest accolade and previous recipients include Arthur Eddington, Albert Einstein, Edwin Hubble, Stephen Hawking and Jocelyn Bell Burnell.
Professor Binney's research has significantly contributed to our understanding of elliptical galaxies, galaxy clusters, and of the Milky Way. His DPhil research, undertaken at the University of Oxford, focused on understanding the sizes and masses of galaxies by studying how hot gas, heated by shocks, cools down during the early stages of galaxy formation. This work was highly influential, and gas cooling remains one of the key ingredients in modern galaxy formation models. After holding several post-doctoral positions, including a position at Princeton University, he returned to Oxford in 1981 where he has remained since.
Over his career, Professor Binney’s work has also led to an understanding of the role that black holes play in limiting star formation as well as the role that a galaxy’s structure plays in its chemical evolution. He later contributed significantly to the work that generated the standard model for the mass distribution of the Milky Way. This is now being revised by the current flood of data from the Gaia observatory, and Professor Binney is playing an active role at the heart of these developments, which continue to exploit the theoretical methods he developed.
Professor Binney has authored over 200 articles in peer-reviewed journals and several textbooks, including Galactic Dynamics, considered a standard work of reference in its field. He has served on many funding bodies in the UK and abroad, and is both a Fellow of the Royal Society and an International Member of the US National Academy of Sciences.
‘I am delighted to be honoured by the RAS by the award of this year's Gold Medal,’ comments Professor Binney. ‘It was my great good fortune to be a theorist at a time of extraordinary progress in astronomy, mostly driven by spectacular advances in instrumentation. And most of what I've achieved has been in collaboration with generations of brilliant students and postdocs – this honour must be shared with them.
‘For the last nearly 20 years, I have focused on modelling our own galaxy and I am still trying to get a better understanding of how its dark matter – which accounts for 90% of its mass – is distributed. Our galaxy is a complicated beast and sophisticated dynamical models of it are needed to synthesise into a coherent picture the enormous volume of observational data that now bears on its structure and history.’
‘James is an authority in his field and has been a highly valued member of our department – now emeritus – for decades,’ comments Professor Andrew Boothroyd, Head of Department. ‘He continues to push at the boundaries of our understanding and this prestigious award is incredibly well deserved.’