Professor Lord Martin Rees

We are delighted to confirm that Professor Martin Rees (Lord Rees of Ludlow) will give a Keynote Lecture at LIYSF.

Professor Rees is a world leading cosmologist and astrophysicist. He is a Fellow of Trinity College and Emeritus Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics at the University of Cambridge. He has been Astronomer Royal since 1995, is a visiting Professor at Imperial College London and at Leicester University. He was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge (2004-12) and President of the Royal Society (2005-10).

He obtained his undergraduate degree and Phd from the University of Cambridge. He has held post-doctoral positions in both the USA and the UK. He returned to the UK as a professor at Sussex University and subsequently became a fellow of King’s College and Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at Cambridge. He served as director of Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy for ten years. He served as a Royal Society Research Professor. He was appointed to the House of Lords in 2005.

He has written or co-authored over 500 research papers. He has written eleven books and numerous magazine and newspaper articles, as well as several broadcast TV programmes and lectured internationally. His current main research areas are;  high energy astrophysics, cosmic structure formation and general cosmological issues.

His awards include the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, the Balzan International Prize, the Heineman Prize for Astrophysics (AAS/AIP), the Bruce Medal of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, the Einstein Award of the World Cultural Council, the Bower Award for Science of the Franklin Institute, the Cosmology Prize of the Peter Gruber Foundation and the Crafoord Prize (Royal Swedish Academy). He has been president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science  and the Royal Astronomical Society and a trustee of the British Museum, NESTA, the National Museum of Science and Industry, the Kennedy Memorial Trust and the Institute for Public Policy Research.

He is a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society and is an honorary member of the Pontifical Academy,, the Russian Academy of Sciences and a number of other foreign academies.

He is currently on the Board of the Cambridge Gates Trust, the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, and has served on many bodies connected with education, space research, arms control and international collaboration in science.