Andrew Lyne

Andrew Lyne
FRS
Andrew Lyne in 2007
Born
Andrew Geoffrey Lyne

(1942-07-13) 13 July 1942 (age 82)
EducationThe Portsmouth Grammar School
Alma mater
AwardsHerschel Medal (1992)
Scientific career
FieldsRadio astronomy
Pulsars[1]
InstitutionsJodrell Bank Observatory
University of Manchester
University of Cambridge
ThesisInterferometric Observations of Lunar Occulations and Pulsars (1970)
Doctoral advisorFrancis Graham-Smith[2]
Doctoral studentsDuncan Lorimer[3]
Websitewww.jb.man.ac.uk/~agl Edit this at Wikidata

Andrew Geoffrey Lyne FRS (born 13 July 1942) is a British physicist. Lyne is Langworthy Professor of Physics in the School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manchester, as well as an ex-director of the Jodrell Bank Observatory. Despite retiring in 2007 he remains an active researcher within the Jodrell Bank Pulsar Group.[4][5] Lyne writes that he is "mostly interested in finding and understanding radio pulsars in all their various forms and with their various companions. Presently, I am most occupied with the development of new multibeam search systems at Jodrell and Parkes, in order to probe deeper into the Galaxy, particularly for millisecond pulsars, young pulsars and any that might be in binary systems."[6] [1]

Education

Lyne was educated at Portsmouth Grammar School, the Royal Naval School, Tal Handaq, Malta, and the University of Cambridge, where he read the Natural Sciences Tripos as a student of St John's College, Cambridge.[6] After his undergraduate degree from Cambridge, he continued to the University of Manchester for a PhD in Radio Astronomy where his research supervised by Francis Graham-Smith.[2]

Career and research

In 1991, Andrew Lyne and Matthew Bailes reported that they had discovered a pulsar orbited by a planetary companion;[7] this would have been the first planet detected around another star. However, after this was announced, the group went back and checked their work, and found that they had not properly removed the effects of the Earth's motion around the Sun from their analysis, and, when the calculations were redone correctly, the pulse variations that led to their conclusions disappeared, and that there was in fact no planet around PSR 1829-10. When Lyne announced the retraction of his results at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society, he received thunderous applause from his scientific colleagues for having the intellectual integrity and the courage to admit this error publicly.[8]

Double pulsar

In 2003, Lyne and his team discovered the first binary system found in which both components were pulsed neutron stars.[9] Lyne's colleague Richard Manchester called the PSR J0737-3039 system a "fantastic natural laboratory" for studying specialized effects of the General Theory of Relativity. Other recent work that Lyne has undertaken includes research on the globular cluster at 47 Tucanae,[10] whose dense stellar population acts as a nursery for millisecond and binary pulsars.

Awards and honours

Lyne was awarded the Herschel Medal by the Royal Astronomical Society in 1992 and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1996.[11]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Andrew Lyne.

References

  1. ^ a b Andrew Lyne publications indexed by Google Scholar Edit this at Wikidata
  2. ^ a b Lyne, Andrew Geoffrey (1970). Interferometric observations of lunar occulations and pulsars. manchester.ac.uk (PhD thesis). University of Manchester. OCLC 643375430.{{cite thesis}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  3. ^ Lorimer, Duncan Ross (1996). Galactic population of millisecond and normal pulsars. manchester.ac.uk (PhD thesis). University of Manchester. OCLC 657642507.
  4. ^ Smith, F. G.; Davies, R.; Lyne, A. (2012). "Bernard Lovell (1913–2012)". Nature. 488 (7413): 592. Bibcode:2012Natur.488..592S. doi:10.1038/488592a. PMID 22932377.
  5. ^ "Pulsar Astrophysics | Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics".
  6. ^ a b Anon (2007). "Lyne, Prof. Andrew Geoffrey". Who's Who (online Oxford University Press ed.). Oxford: A & C Black. doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U25178. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  7. ^ Bailes, M.; Lyne, A. G.; Shemar, S. L. (1991). "A planet orbiting the neutron star PSR1829–10". Nature. 352 (6333): 311. Bibcode:1991Natur.352..311B. doi:10.1038/352311a0. S2CID 4339517.
  8. ^ Croswell, K. (1997). Planet Quest. Oxford University Press. p. 149.
  9. ^ Lyne, A. G; Burgay, M; Kramer, M; Possenti, A; Manchester, R. N; Camilo, F; McLaughlin, M. A; Lorimer, D. R; d'Amico, N; Joshi, B. C; Reynolds, J; Freire, P. C. C (2004). "A Double-Pulsar System: A Rare Laboratory for Relativistic Gravity and Plasma Physics". Science. 303 (5661): 1153–1157. arXiv:astro-ph/0401086. Bibcode:2004Sci...303.1153L. doi:10.1126/science.1094645. PMID 14716022. S2CID 18052400.
  10. ^ "The 47 Tucanae Pulsars Homepage". Archived from the original on 22 December 2004. Retrieved 8 January 2005.
  11. ^ Anon (1996). "Andrew Lyne FRS". royalsociety.org. London: Royal Society.
Academic offices
Preceded by Langworthy Professor at the University of Manchester
2001–07 		Succeeded by