Charles Jonathan Penrose Tennyson (born 11 May 1955) is a British physicist. He is the

Massey Massey may refer to: Places Canada * Massey, Ontario * Massey Island, Nunavut New Zealand * Massey, New Zealand, an Auckland suburb United States * Massey, Alabama * Massey, Iowa * Massey, Maryland People * Massey (surname) Educati ...

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professor ...

Physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which rel ...

(since 2005) and Head of department at the Department of Physics and Astronomy,

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = � ...

(2004–11). Chief Scientist

Quantemol Quantemol Ltd is based in University College London initiated by Professor Jonathan Tennyson FRS and Dr. Daniel Brown in 2004. The company initially developed a unique software tool, Quantemol-N, which provides full accessibility to the highly ...

Ltd and chair, Blue Skies Space Ltd.

Education

He was educated at

Bootham School Bootham School is an independent Quaker boarding school, on Bootham in the city of York in England. It accepts boys and girls ages 3–19, and had an enrolment of 605 pupils in 2016. It is one of seven Quaker schools in England. The scho ...

, York. He continued his studies at

King's College, Cambridge King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, the college lies beside the River Cam and faces out onto King's Parade in the centre of the cit ...

and the

University of Sussex , mottoeng = Be Still and Know , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £14.4 million (2020) , budget = £319.6 million (2019–20) , chancellor = Sanjeev Bhaskar , vice_chancellor = Sasha Roseneil , ...

Research and career

Tennyson is an author of over 700 scientific papers focusing on applications of molecular

spectroscopy Spectroscopy is the field of study that measures and interprets the electromagnetic spectra that result from the interaction between electromagnetic radiation and matter as a function of the wavelength or frequency of the radiation. Matter ...

to problems in

astrophysics Astrophysics is a science that employs the methods and principles of physics and chemistry in the study of astronomical objects and phenomena. As one of the founders of the discipline said, Astrophysics "seeks to ascertain the nature of the he ...

, atmospheric science,

plasma physics Plasma ()πλάσμα
, Henry George Liddell, R ...

and other fields. He has written a number of popular science articles. He wrote the undergraduate textbook ''Astronomical Spectroscopy: An Introduction to the Atomic and Molecular Physics of Astronomical Spectra'' (2005). Leader of the

ExoMol ExoMol is a database of molecular line lists that can be used for spectral characterisation and simulation of astrophysical environments such as exoplanets, brown dwarfs, cool stars and sunspots. The project is run by the theoretical molecular phys ...

project.

Awards and honours

Tennyson was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2009. One or more of the preceding sentences may incorporate text from the royalsociety.org website where "all text published under the heading 'Biography' on Fellow profile pages is available under

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work".A "work" is any creative material made by a person. A painting, a graphic, a book, a song/lyric ...

Personal life

He is the son of

Hallam Tennyson Hallam Tennyson, 2nd Baron Tennyson, (11 August 1852 – 2 December 1928) was a British aristocrat who served as the second governor-general of Australia, in office from 1903 to 1904. He was previously Governor of South Australia from 1899 to 1 ...

, grandson of

Sir Charles Tennyson Sir Charles Bruce Locker Tennyson (8 November 1879 – 22 June 1977) was a grandson of the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson, a civil servant, an industrialist, and an academic of his grandfather. Tennyson was the son of the Hon. Lionel Tennyson and h ...

and is the great-great-grandson of

Alfred Lord Tennyson Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his ...

. He is the father of actor

Matthew Tennyson Matthew Tennyson is an English actor of stage and screen. He won the Evening Standard Award for Outstanding Newcomer in 2012. Early life Tennyson was born in Stoke Newington, London, the son of Jonathan Tennyson, a physics professor, and a nurs ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tennyson, Jonathan 1955 births Living people British physicists Academics of University College London British people of German descent Fellows of the Royal Society People from Hitchin People educated at Bootham School

Jonathan Jonathan may refer to: *Jonathan (name), a masculine given name Media * ''Jonathan'' (1970 film), a German film directed by Hans W. Geißendörfer * ''Jonathan'' (2016 film), a German film directed by Piotr J. Lewandowski * ''Jonathan'' (2018 ...