Michael Perryman is a British astronomer, known for his work leading the

Hipparcos ''Hipparcos'' was a scientific satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA), launched in 1989 and operated until 1993. It was the first space experiment devoted to precision astrometry, the accurate measurement of the positions of celestial obj ...

and

Gaia In Greek mythology, Gaia (; from Ancient Greek , a poetical form of , 'land' or 'earth'),, , . also spelled Gaea , is the personification of the Earth and one of the Greek primordial deities. Gaia is the ancestral mother—sometimes parthenog ...

space astrometric projects.

Education

Michael Perryman studied theoretical physics at Cambridge University and received his doctorate from the

Cavendish Laboratory The Cavendish Laboratory is the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge, and is part of the School of Physical Sciences. The laboratory was opened in 1874 on the New Museums Site as a laboratory for experimental physics and is named ...

, Cambridge University, in 1979.

Hipparcos

He joined the ESA in 1980, where he headed the Hipparcos astrometric project as Project Scientist from 1981 till 1997. After the satellite failed to reach its target geostationary orbit, he also took over the mission management, the project eventually recovering all and more of its original scientific objectives.

Gaia

In 1993, together with

Lennart Lindegren Lennart Lindegren is a member of the staff at Lund Observatory, Sweden, where he obtained his PhD in 1980, and became a full professor of astronomy in 2000. Space astrometry and its various applications has been his main focus in astronomy since ...

, he jointly proposed a more ambitious astrometric mission to take advantage of technological advances such as CCDs (unavailable for Hipparcos) and large lightweight mirrors. In 1995, Perryman was named study scientist for the new mission concept, named

. The mission was approved by ESA's Science Programme Committee in 2000 and Perryman appointed project scientist. He led the Gaia project till the Critical Design Review in 2008, establishing the payload concept, technical feasibility, operational and data analysis principles, its organisation structure, and coordinating its scientific case, leading to its successful launch in 2013.

Institutions

He was Professor of Astronomy at

Leiden University Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; nl, Universiteit Leiden) is a Public university, public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. The university was founded as a Protestant university in 1575 by William the Silent, William, Prince o ...

from 1993 to 2009. In 2010, he held a joint position at Heidelberg University and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, and since 2012 he has been adjunct professor at University College Dublin. He was Bohdan Paczynski visiting professor at Princeton in 2013.

Recognitions

The main belt asteroid 10969 Perryman has been named in recognition of his contributions to astrometry. In 1999 Perryman was awarded the Academy Medal by the

Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences ( nl, Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, abbreviated: KNAW) is an organization dedicated to the advancement of science and literature in the Netherlands. The academy is housed ...

. In 2011 he was awarded the

Tycho Brahe Prize The Tycho Brahe Prize is awarded by the European Astronomical Society. Inaugurated in 2008, the prize is awarded annually in recognition of the pioneering development or exploitation of European astronomical instrumentation, or major discoveries ...

of the European Astronomical Society for his ''crucial role in the fostering of high precision, global stellar astrometry from space, in particular the development of the Hipparcos mission.'' In 2022 he received the

Shaw Prize The Shaw Prize is an annual award presented by the Shaw Prize Foundation. Established in 2002 in Hong Kong, it honours "individuals who are currently active in their respective fields and who have recently achieved distinguished and signifi ...

in Astronomy jointly with

.Shaw Prize 2022
/ref>

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Perryman, Michael 20th-century British astronomers 1954 births Living people Members of Academia Europaea Alumni of the University of Cambridge 21st-century British astronomers