Steven Balbus | |
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.jpg) Balbus in 2016 | |
| Born | (1953-11-23)23 November 1953 (age 72) |
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| Scientific career | |
| Thesis | The effects of thermal conduction in high temperature astrophysical gas dynamics (1981) |
| Website | www2 |
Steven Andrew BalbusFRS[1] (born 23 November 1953) is an Americanastrophysicist who is theSavilian Professor of Astronomy Emeritus at theUniversity of Oxford and a senior research fellow atNew College, Oxford.[2] In 2013, he shared theShaw Prize for Astronomy withJohn F. Hawley.[3]
Balbus was born in 1953 inPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania.[4] He attended theWilliam Penn Charter School, received S.B. degrees in mathematics and in physics from theMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1975, and a PhD in theoreticalastrophysics from theUniversity of California, Berkeley in 1981.[5][6]
Following his PhD, Balbus heldpostdoctoral research appointments at MIT andPrinceton University.[2] In 1985, Balbus joined the faculty of theUniversity of Virginia. In 2004, he was appointed Professeur des Universités in the Physics Department of theÉcole Normale Supérieure de Paris. He remainedin Paris until 2012, when he moved to Oxford as theSavilian Professor of Astronomy. He retired from this post in October 2024, retaining Emeritus status. At Oxford, he taught astrophysicalgas dynamics, general relativity, and supervised postdoctoral researchers and students.[2]
Balbus' research is in theoretical astrophysics.[7] He has made discoveries related to gravitational instability in the interstellar medium and several contributions to the theory of thermal processes in magnetised dilute plasmas.[2] He is best known for a 1991 paper, published with former colleagueJohn F. Hawley, describing what is now known asmagnetorotational instability (MRI).[2][8] Most recently, Balbus has been working on a theory of the Sun's internal rotation.[2] As of 2016, Balbus has also been lecturing an undergraduate course in general relativity at the University of Oxford; with several lectures coinciding with the discovery ofgravitational waves in February 2016.
Balbus was awarded a Chaire d'excellence in 2004 by the French Ministry of Higher Education.[9] In 2013, he shared theShaw Prize in Astronomy with Hawley for their work on the MRI.[3] Considered one of the highest honours in astronomy, the prize included a US$1 million cash award.[3][8] According to the Shaw selection committee the "discovery and elucidation of the magnetorotational instability (MRI)" solved the previously "elusive" problem of accretion, a widespread phenomenon in astrophysics and "provides what to this day remains the only viable mechanism for the outward transfer of angular momentum in accretion disks".[8][10]
Balbus is the recipient of aRoyal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award,[11] and has held visiting faculty positions at Princeton University (Bohdan Paczynski Visitor and Spitzer Lecturer, 2011) and the University of California, Berkeley (Visiting Miller Professor, 2012). In April 2015, Balbus was elected to the USNational Academy of Sciences. He was elected aFellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2016.[1] In 2020 he was awarded theEddington Medal of theRoyal Astronomical Society,[12] and in 2021 theDirac Medal and Prize of theInstitute of Physics. In 2023 he was awarded theNick Kylafis Lectureship[13]
"All text published under the heading 'Biography' on Fellow profile pages is available underCreative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License." --"Royal Society Terms, conditions and policies". Archived from the original on 25 September 2015. Retrieved9 March 2016.
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