Peter John Young (31 July 1954—5 September 1981) was a British astrophysicist who made major contributions to

extragalactic astronomy Extragalactic astronomy is the branch of astronomy concerned with objects outside the Milky Way galaxy. In other words, it is the study of all astronomical objects which are not covered by galactic astronomy. The closest objects in extragalactic ...

and

cosmology Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe, the cosmos. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', with the meaning of "a speaking of the wo ...

. He obtained his PhD from

California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small group of institutes ...

in 1981. His contributions include the discovery of the

intergalactic medium Intergalactic may refer to: * "Intergalactic" (song), a song by the Beastie Boys * ''Intergalactic'' (TV series), a 2021 UK science fiction TV series * Intergalactic space * Intergalactic travel, travel between galaxies in science fiction and ...

, the detection of a

supermassive black hole A supermassive black hole (SMBH or sometimes SBH) is the largest type of black hole, with its mass being on the order of hundreds of thousands, or millions to billions, of times the mass of the Sun (). Black holes are a class of astronomical ...

in the galaxy M87, the identification of the optical counterpart to the first

gravitational lens A gravitational lens is matter, such as a galaxy cluster, cluster of galaxies or a point particle, that bends light from a distant source as it travels toward an observer. The amount of gravitational lensing is described by Albert Einstein's Ge ...

, and the theory of gravitational microlensing.

Early life and education

Educated at

Leeds Grammar School Leeds Grammar School was an independent school founded 1552 in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. Originally a male-only school, in August 2005 it merged with Leeds Girls' High School to form The Grammar School at Leeds. The two schools physica ...

, Young studied mathematics at

St John's College, Cambridge St John's College, formally the College of St John the Evangelist in the University of Cambridge, is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge, founded by the House of Tudor, Tudor matriarch L ...

(1972-1975), where he was

Senior Wrangler The Senior Wrangler is the top mathematics undergraduate at the University of Cambridge in England, a position which has been described as "the greatest intellectual achievement attainable in Britain". Specifically, it is the person who achiev ...

(highest-placed First Class degree) in 1975. He obtained a master's degree in astronomy under the supervision of

Gerard de Vaucouleurs Gerard is a masculine forename of Proto-Germanic origin, variations of which exist in many Germanic and Romance languages. Like many other early Germanic names, it is dithematic, consisting of two meaningful constituents put together. In this cas ...

at the

University of Texas, Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 students as of fall 20 ...

in 1976. He then began his PhD at the

under the supervision of Wallace Sargent. He completed this degree in 18 months and was employed for a further year as a postdoctoral researcher. He joined the Caltech faculty as an assistant professor in 1979, aged 25.

Scientific achievements

Young and his PhD supervisor Wallace Sargent worked with

Alexander Boksenberg Alexander (Alec) Boksenberg CBE FRS (born 18 March 1936) is a British scientist who was the Director of the Royal Greenwich Observatory from 1981–1995. In the early 1980s he developed the image photon counting system, an electronic detector f ...

and made use of the Mount Palomar 200-inch

Hale Telescope The Hale Telescope is a , 3.3 reflecting telescope at the Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California, US, named after astronomer George Ellery Hale. With funding from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1928, he orchestrated the planning, de ...

with Boksenberg's Image Photon Counting Spectrograph (IPCS), the first photon-counting device used in astronomy, to conduct research. In 1978, Young et al. and Sargent et al. provided photometric and spectroscopic evidence for a

in the nucleus of the elliptical galaxy M87. This object was latterly revealed via direct high-resolution imaging by the

Event Horizon Telescope The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is a Astronomical interferometer, telescope array consisting of a global network of radio telescopes. The EHT project combines data from several very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI) stations around Earth, wh ...

. In 1980, Sargent, Young, Boksenberg, and Tytler studied the

Lyman-alpha forest In astronomical spectroscopy, the Lyman-alpha forest is a series of absorption lines in the spectra of distant galaxies and quasars arising from the Lyman-alpha electron transition of the neutral hydrogen atom. As the light travels through mult ...

in the rest-frame ultraviolet portion of quasar spectra, concluding that it arose from absorption by a cosmological distribution of partly ionized neutral Hydrogen. They also established the existence of the

. Also in 1980, Young et al. identified the galaxy responsible for the first

, the Double Quasar

Q0957+561 The Twin Quasar (also known as Twin QSO, Double Quasar, SBS 0957+561, TXS 0957+561, Q0957+561 or QSO 0957+561 A/B), was discovered in 1979 and was the first identified gravitational lens, gravitationally lensed double quasar, not to be confused ...

. This paper produced the first detailed mass models for a cosmological lensing event. In 1981, Young realized that the multiple images in

would be affected by the

gravitational field In physics, a gravitational field or gravitational acceleration field is a vector field used to explain the influences that a body extends into the space around itself. A gravitational field is used to explain gravitational phenomena, such as ...

s of a large number of stars in the lensing galaxy, leading to rapid fluctuations in the magnification of the quasar images. His theoretical study of these superimposed gravitational deflections helped initiate the subject of gravitational

microlensing Gravitational microlensing is an astronomical phenomenon caused by the gravitational lens effect. It can be used to detect objects that range from the mass of a planet to the mass of a star, regardless of the light they emit. Typically, astronome ...

. By the time of his death after five years at Caltech, Young had written 33 papers.

Death

On 5 September 1981, Young committed

suicide Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Risk factors for suicide include mental disorders, physical disorders, and substance abuse. Some suicides are impulsive acts driven by stress (such as from financial or ac ...

by taking

potassium cyanide Potassium cyanide is a compound with the formula KCN. It is a colorless salt, similar in appearance to sugar, that is highly soluble in water. Most KCN is used in gold mining, organic synthesis, and electroplating. Smaller applications include ...

which he had obtained from a chemistry stockroom at the university. According to Sargent and Peter Goldreich, Young had suffered from depression and psychological issues since his time at Cambridge and had previously talked about killing himself.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Young, Peter J. 1954 births 1981 deaths British cosmologists British astrophysicists Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge University of Texas at Austin alumni California Institute of Technology alumni California Institute of Technology faculty British expatriate academics in the United States 1981 suicides Suicides by cyanide poisoning Suicides in California