Gerard F. Gilmore

Gerry Gilmore
Born	Gerard Francis Gilmore (1951-11-07) 7 November 1951 Timaru, New Zealand
Institutions	University of Cambridge European Southern Observatory
Alma mater	University of Canterbury (BS, PhD) University of Cambridge (MA, ScD)
Thesis	Observational extragalactic astronomy : an investigation of southern quasars and related objects (1979)
Doctoral advisor	Ken Fea
Known for	Discovery of the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy
Notable awards	FRS (2015) ScD (2002) FRAS FInstP
Website www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~gil

Gerard Francis Gilmore FRS FRAS FInstP is Professor of Experimental Philosophy, in the Institute of Astronomy, at the University of Cambridge.

Education

Gilmore was educated at St Bede's College, Christchurch and the University of Canterbury, where he was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in 1973 and a PhD in 1979. He continued his education at Clare Hall, Cambridge where he was awarded a Master of Arts degree and a Doctor of Science (ScD) degree in 2002.

Awards and honours

Gilmore was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2013. His nomination reads:

Gerry Gilmore leads efforts to understand the structure and origin of our Galaxy. He led a revival of star-count analysis that first showed that the Galaxy possesses a "thick" disc, and helped to show that the thick disc formed early in the Galaxy's life. Our current understanding of how the masses of stars are distributed at birth was produced by Gilmore's team. In the early 1990s with a student he obtained the still standard estimate of the mass surface density associated with the discs. This study set the pattern of future work. He pioneered the use of spectral surveys to unravel the Galaxy's history through its chemistry and established that stars in the halo of the Galaxy are chemically distinct from stars in the Galaxy's satellites, even though much of the halo must consist of stars stripped from satellites. In 1994 with a student he discovered the Galaxy's most important satellite after the Magellanic Clouds. As its leading UK proponent, Gilmore played a big role in selection of ESA's revolutionary Gaia mission. He is the driving force behind the ESO-Gaia survey, which has over 250 co-investigators and will obtain spectra designed to complement data from Gaia.