George Efstathiou | |
|---|---|
| Born | George Petros Efstathiou (1955-09-02)2 September 1955 (age 70) |
| Education | Tottenham Grammar School |
| Alma mater | Keble College, Oxford (BA) University of Durham (PhD) |
| Awards | |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Cosmology |
| Institutions | University of California Berkeley Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge University of Oxford |
| Thesis | On the rotation and clustering of galaxies (1979) |
| Doctoral advisor | Dick Fong[1] |
| Website | www |
George Petros EfstathiouFRS (/ɛfˈstæθ.juː/; born 2 September 1955) is a Britishastrophysicist who wasProfessor of Astrophysics at the University of Cambridge from 1997 to 2022, where he was also the first director of theKavli Institute for Cosmology from 2008 to 2016. Prior to these appointments he wasSavilian Professor of Astronomy at theUniversity of Oxford.[2]
Efstathiou was made aFellow of the Royal Society in 1994 and has received numerous awards, including (with collaboratorsSimon White,Marc Davis andCarlos Frenk) the 2011Gruber Prize in Cosmology and the 2022Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society. He is one of the most heavily cited astrophysicists; as of 2025, his 400 published papers had been cited over 130,000 times.[3]
Efstathiou was born in London toGreek Cypriot immigrant parents who operated a fish and chip shop.[3] Educated atTottenham Grammar School, he abandoned formal studies at age 16, but remained at his school to work as a lab technician. He later gained admission toKeble College, Oxford to read Physics, having combined work at the family business withA Level studies.[3]
After graduating from Oxford withfirst class honours he moved to theUniversity of Durham to gain his doctorate, where he was supervised by Richard 'Dick' Fong. At this time theDurham Physics Department had 'hardly any' people working on astronomy and Efstathiou was largely left to his own devices.[3] He carried out some of the firstcomputer simulations of the formation of cosmic structure, and was awarded hisPhD in 1979.[4]
Efstathiou was a research assistant in the Astronomy Department ofUniversity of California, Berkeley from 1979 to 1980, then moved to theInstitute of Astronomy at theUniversity of Cambridge, holding research fellowships atKing's College, Cambridge from 1980 to 1988. He was appointedSavilian Professor of Astronomy at theUniversity of Oxford in 1988, and held a fellowship atNew College, Oxford. He was head of astrophysics between 1988 and 1994. He returned to Cambridge in 1997 as Professor of Astrophysics (1909) and a fellow of King's College. Efstathiou was director of the Institute ofAstronomy between 2004 and 2008. He became the first director of theKavli Institute for Cosmology in 2008.[5]
Efstathiou has made a number of notable contributions to research in cosmology, including:
He was awarded theMaxwell Medal and Prize of theInstitute of Physics in 1990. In 1994 he was both appointed aFellow of the Royal Society (FRS), and was awarded the Bodossaki Foundation Academic and Cultural Prize for Astrophysics. Other awards include the Robinson Prize in Cosmology (Newcastle University, 1997) and theDannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics (American Institute of Physics andAmerican Astronomical Society) in 2005, jointly withSimon White.[5] He received theGruber Prize in Cosmology for 2011 jointly withMarc Davis,Carlos Frenk andSimon White, theNemitsas Prize in Physics for 2013 and theHughes Medal of the Royal Society in 2015.[10] In 2022 Efstathiou was awarded the Gold Medal of theRoyal Astronomical Society, its highest honour, whose previous recipients includeAlbert Einstein,Edwin Hubble andFred Hoyle.[11] In January 2025, Durham University awarded Efstathiou an honorary degree.[12] In 2025 he was awarded theShaw Prize in Astronomy.[13]
Savilian Professors | |
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Chairs established bySir Henry Savile | |
| Savilian Professors of Astronomy |
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| Savilian Professors of Geometry |
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