Douglas N. C. Lin (born May 7, 1949) is professor of astronomy and astrophysics at theUniversity of California, Santa Cruz. He was born in New York and grew up in Beijing.[1] He earned his BSc fromMcGill University, his PhD from the Institute of Astronomy,Cambridge University, and performed postdoctoral research at bothHarvard and Cambridge. In 1979 he took an Assistant Professorship atUCSC, and has remained there since. He is also the founding director of the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics atPeking University.[2]
Douglas Lin's principal research interests are in the origin of theSolar System, star formation, astrophysical fluid dynamics, dynamics of stellar clusters, structure of galaxies, active galactic nuclei, and galaxy formation.[3]
As a mark of respect to his long history of contribution within astronomy, in 2009Monash University held a symposium titled "Evolution of Planetary and Stellar Systems" (nicknamed "Linfest") in his honour.[4] He also sits on the selection committee for the Astronomy award, given under the auspices of theShaw Prize.