Michael (Mike) Garrett (born 1964) is a Scottish astronomer. He has been the Director of

Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics The Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics (JBCA) at the University of Manchester is among the largest astrophysics groups in the UK. It includes the Jodrell Bank Observatory, the MERLIN/VLBI National Facility, and the Jodrell Bank Visitor Centre. ...

since September 2016. He was previously the

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

ASTRON ASTRON is the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy. Its main office is in Dwingeloo in the Dwingelderveld National Park in the province of Drenthe. ASTRON is part of the institutes organization of the Dutch Research Council (NWO). History A ...

, part of the

Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research The Dutch Research Council (NWO, Dutch: Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek) is the national research council of the Netherlands. NWO funds thousands of top researchers at universities and institutes and steers the course o ...

Personal life

He was born in

Kilwinning Kilwinning (, ; ) is a town in North Ayrshire, Scotland. It is located on the banks of the River Garnock in Ayrshire, west/central Scotland, about southwest of Glasgow. Kilwinning's neighbours are the coastal towns of Stevenston to the west an ...

North Ayrshire North Ayrshire (, ) is one of 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas in Scotland. The council area borders Inverclyde to the north, Renfrewshire and East Renfrewshire to the northeast, and East Ayrshire and South Ayrshire to the east and s ...

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

, and brought up in nearby

Saltcoats Saltcoats (; Scots: ''Saulcuts'') is a town on the west coast of North Ayrshire, Scotland. The name is derived from the town's earliest industry when salt was harvested from the sea water of the Firth of Clyde, carried out in small cottages ...

, on the west coast.

Education

He went to St. Mary's (1969–1976) and St. Andrew's RC schools (1976–1982). He graduated with first-class honours at the

University of Glasgow The University of Glasgow (abbreviated as ''Glas.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals; ) is a Public university, public research university in Glasgow, Scotland. Founded by papal bull in , it is the List of oldest universities in continuous ...

(1982–1986). He studied for his PhD at

Jodrell Bank Observatory Jodrell Bank Observatory ( ) in Cheshire, England hosts a number of radio telescopes as part of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester. The observatory was established in 1945 by Bernard Lovell, a radio as ...

University of Manchester The University of Manchester is a public university, public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester city centre, Manchester City Centre on Wilmslow Road, Oxford Road. The University of Manchester is c ...

(1986–1990), supervised by

Dennis Walsh Dennis Walsh (12 June 1933 – 1 June 2005) was an English astronomer. He was an early radio astronomer, as well as an optical astronomer. He was best known for his discovery in 1979 of the first example of a gravitational lens, B0957+561, u ...

Career

Garrett started work at the

Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe The Joint Institute for Very Long Baseline Interferometry European Research Infrastructure Consortium (JIVE) was established by a decision of the European Commission in December 2014, and assumed the activities and responsibilities of the JIVE fou ...

(JIVE) in 1996, working on support for the

European VLBI Network The European VLBI Network (EVN) is a network of radio telescopes located primarily in Europe and Asia, with additional antennas in South Africa and Puerto Rico, which performs very high angular resolution observations of cosmic radio sources usin ...

. He became the director of JIVE in 2003, and over the course of his four-year tenure the number of employees at the institute doubled from 20 to 40. On 1 February 2007 he became the

, part of the

. He was one of 14 winners of the 2013 IBM Faculty Award. He became the inaugural Sir

Bernard Lovell Sir Alfred Charles Bernard Lovell ( ; 31 August 19136 August 2012) was an English physicist and radio astronomer. He was the first director of Jodrell Bank Observatory, from 1945 to 1980. Early life and education Lovell was born at Oldland Co ...

Chair of Astrophysics and the Director of

in September 2016. He was elected a member of the

Academia Europaea The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of humanities, letters, law, and sciences. The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of Europe ...

in 2021 and a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the Fellows of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...

in 2024.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Garrett, Michael 1964 births Living people 21st-century British astronomers People from Kilwinning Fellows of the Royal Society Members of Academia Europaea