Garik Israelian
Garik Israelian | |
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Born | 1963 (age 60–61) Yerevan, Armenia |
Nationality | Armenian, Spanish |
Alma mater | Yerevan State University[2] |
Awards | Viktor Ambartsumian International Prize (2010),[1] The Canary Islands Gold Medal (2014) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Astrophysics, Spectroscopy |
Institutions | Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias[2] |
Garik Israelian (Armenian: Գարիկ Իսրայելյան, born 1963) is an Armenian-Spanish astrophysicist and co-founder of the Starmus Festival. In 1999, Israelian and colleagues presented the first observational evidence that supernova explosions were responsible for the formation of stellar-mass black holes.
Early life and education
Garik Israelian was born in 1963 in Yerevan in then-Soviet Armenia. Preferring music over studying, he quit school at the age of 16, playing rock guitar in bars. Israelian credits sci-fi film Solaris for piquing his interest in science fiction and inspiring him to go to university. He studied astrophysics under Viktor Ambartsumian at Yerevan State University, graduating in 1987 and completing his Ph.D. in 1992. After a brief stint with an observatory in Northern Ireland and fellowships in Netherlands, Belgium and Australia, his final fellowship settled him in the Canary Islands in 1997 where he stayed and obtained Spanish citizenship.[2][3]
Career
Israelian has worked at the Institute of Astrophysics, Canary Islands (IAC) since 1997.[2] In 1999, Israelian and colleagues found the first observational evidence, based on data from the W. M. Keck Observatory, that supernova explosions are responsible for the formation of black holes.[4]
In 2001, he proposed the "Lithium-6 test" to determine if a star has engulfed a planet or other gaseous or solid matter. He and collaborators proposed that a solar-type star HD82943 with two giant planets has swallowed a massive planet or a large amount of small rocky matter.[5][6]
In 2009, he and colleagues discovered that stars with planets, such as the sun, tend to have much less lithium.[7]
Starsounds and Starmus
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/46/Stephen_Hawking-medal_2017.jpg/220px-Stephen_Hawking-medal_2017.jpg)
In 2005, Israelian compiled a library of acoustic sound waves produced within the bodies of stars.[8] In 2013, Brian May and the band Tangerine Dream used the starsounds in their composition Supernovae,[9] and in 2016 Brian Eno arranged some of Israelian's star recordings into a composition titled Starsounds.[8]
In 2011, together with astrophysicist and musician Brian May, Israelian and May created Starmus, a festival that would bring together the stars and music.[10] The concept of the Starsounds project was explained in Israelian's lecture "Our Acoustic Universe" at the first Starmus Festival and published in 2014 in the book Starmus: 50 Years of Man in Space.[11]
In a 2016 Larry King Now interview along with Stephen Hawking, Israelian explained the Starmus project and how he viewed music and arts as a natural way to inspire youth in science and astronomy — "I always thought that science inspired art, and art inspired science".[12]
Awards
In 2010, Michel Mayor, Nobel laureate in Physics, Israelian, and Nuno Santos were awarded the Viktor Ambartsumian International Prize "[f]or their important contribution in the study of relation between planetary systems and their host stars."[1]
In 2014, Israelian received The Canary Islands Gold Medal, awarded by the government of the Canary Islands.[13]
On 20 June 2016, the International Astronomical Union and the Minor Planet Center officially renamed asteroid (21057) 1991 GJ8 to Garikisraelian in honor of Israelian.[14]
References
- ^ a b "Viktor Ambartsumian International Prize". vaprize.sci.am. Archived from the original on 12 April 2019.
- "Official Press-Release of Viktor Ambartsumian International Prize Steering Committee, 16.07.2010, Yerevan, Armenia" (Press release). Armenian National Academy of Sciences. 16 July 2010.
- Green, Anna (29 October 2020). "Astrophysicist Garik Israelian on Starmus, the Music of Stars and Gravitational Waves". EVN Report. Retrieved 11 December 2022.
- Israelian, G.; Rebolo, R.; Basri, G.; Casares, J.; Martin, E. L. (1999). "Evidence of a supernova origin for the black hole in the system GRO J1655 - 40". Nature. 401 (6749): 142–144. Bibcode:1999Natur.401..142I. doi:10.1038/43625. S2CID 4403901.
- GRM (10 July 2013). "Tangerine Dream & Brian May: Starmus – Sonic Universe". Prog Magazine.
- "Tangerine Dream And Brian May – Starmus - Sonic Universe (2013, CD) - Discogs". Discogs. Archived from the original on 11 December 2022. Retrieved 11 December 2022.
- Starmus Festival [@StarmusFestival] (8 July 2016). "Honored to announce that an asteroid has been named after Garik Israelian, founder of #Starmus. Congratulations!" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
- "21057 Garikisraelian (1991 GJ8)". Small-Body Database Lookup. Jet Propulsion Lab. Retrieved 8 March 2023.
External links
- Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias
- Garik Israelian at TED