Simon John Lilly FRS is a Professor in the Department of Physics at ETH Zürich.

Education

Lilly was educated at the University of Cambridge where he was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in Natural Sciences (Physics and Theoretical Physics) in 1980. He went on to study at the University of Edinburgh where he was awarded a

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...

in 1983 for research on the evolution of radio galaxies supervised by Malcolm Longair.

Career and research

Following his PhD, Lilly was a SERC/ NATO postdoctoral research Fellow at Princeton University from 1984 to 1985. He was appointed Assistant Professor and then

Associate Professor Associate professor is an academic title with two principal meanings: in the North American system and that of the ''Commonwealth system''. Overview In the ''North American system'', used in the United States and many other countries, it is a ...

at the University of Hawaii from 1985 to 1990, then Full Professor at the University of Toronto from 1990 to 2000. He served as

Director General A director general or director-general (plural: ''directors general'', ''directors-general'', ''director generals'' or ''director-generals'' ) or general director is a senior executive (government), executive officer, often the chief executive offi ...

of the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics from 2000 to 2002. That year, he was appointed Professor at ETH Zurich in 2002, in a dual appointment with his wife

Marcella Carollo C. Marcella Carollo worked as a professional astronomer for 25 years between 1994 and 2019. Her scientific career was ended by the ETH Zürich who, following accusations that she had bullied students, made her the first Professor to be dismissed ...

. He served as Head of the Department of Physics at ETH from 2015 to 2017. Lilly's research investigates galaxy formation and evolution. With the zCOSMOS project, Lilly has sought to identify the physical processes that shape the properties of galaxies over cosmic time in different space environments. He is also working to find new ways of detecting the intergalactic medium — the gaseous material that galaxies form from and later exchange material with.

Controversy

In August 2017,

ETH Zurich (colloquially) , former_name = eidgenössische polytechnische Schule , image = ETHZ.JPG , image_size = , established = , type = Public , budget = CHF 1.896 billion (2021) , rector = Günther Dissertori , president = Joël Mesot , ac ...

dissolved its institute for astronomy. According to news reports in '' NZZ am Sonntag'' and '' Science'' the closure of the institute followed allegations of misconduct in the Institute by Lilly's Italian-Swiss wife,

. A subsequent investigation by ETH cleared Lilly of any misconduct but not Carollo, who was dismissed.

Awards and honours

Lilly was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2014, with the citation noting that his early work "provided the first convincing measurement of the

star formation Star formation is the process by which dense regions within molecular clouds in The "medium" is present further soon.-->interstellar space

history of the Universe." One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: He was awarded the 2017

Herschel Medal The Herschel Medal is awarded by the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) for "investigations of outstanding merit in observational astrophysics". It is awarded for a single piece of work so that younger scientists can be candidates for the award. It ...

by the Royal Astronomical Society, in recognition of his work on the Canada-France Redshift Survey, which "provided the first measurement of the luminosity density of normal galaxies over cosmological timescales ndmotivated the follow-up census at higher redshifts with the first Hubble Deep Field." In 2017 and again in 2018, he was identified as a Highly Cited Researcher for his research work at ETH.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lilly, Simon J Year of birth missing (living people) Living people British astrophysicists Fellows of the Royal Society Alumni of the University of Cambridge Alumni of the University of Edinburgh Academic staff of ETH Zurich