Rychard J. Bouwens is an associate professor at

Leiden University Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; ) is a Public university, public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. Established in 1575 by William the Silent, William, Prince of Orange as a Protestantism, Protestant institution, it holds the d ...

. He is also a former member of the

Advanced Camera for Surveys The Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) is a third-generation axial instrument aboard the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The initial design and scientific capabilities of ACS were defined by a team based at Johns Hopkins University. ACS was assembl ...

Guaranteed Time Observation team and postdoctoral research astronomer at the

University of California, Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California, United States. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of C ...

. He obtained his bachelor's degree in physics, chemistry, and mathematics from

Hope College Hope College is a private Christian liberal arts college in Holland, Michigan, United States. It was originally opened in 1851 as the Pioneer School by Dutch immigrants four years after the community was first settled. The first freshman coll ...

. He then went on to earn his Ph.D. in

physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, 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 whi ...

at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

under the supervision of

Joseph Silk Joseph Ivor Silk (born 3 December 1942) is a British-American astrophysicist. He was the Savilian Chair of Astronomy at the University of Oxford from 1999 to September 2011. He is an Emeritus Fellow of New College, Oxford and a Fellow of th ...

and also worked with Tom Broadhurst. He works on the interpretation of high

redshift In physics, a redshift is an increase in the wavelength, and corresponding decrease in the frequency and photon energy, of electromagnetic radiation (such as light). The opposite change, a decrease in wavelength and increase in frequency and e ...

starburst MicroPro International Corporation was an American software company founded in 1978 in San Rafael, California. They are best known as the publisher of WordStar, a popular early word processor for personal computers. History Founding and early su ...

s. He helped create the Bouwens' Universe Construction Set (BUCS), which can simulate arbitrary galaxy fields and calculate any galaxy observables. Throughout his career, he has broken the record for discovering the most distant galaxy in the universe, including three sources in 2015–2016 with record-breaking spectroscopic redshift measurements at z=7.73 (see EGS-zs8-1), z=8.68 (see EGSY8p7), and z=11.1 (see

GN-z11 GN-z11 is a high-redshift galaxy found in the constellation Ursa Major. It is among the farthest known galaxies from Earth ever discovered. The 2015 discovery was published in a 2016 paper headed by Pascal Oesch and Gabriel Brammer (Cosmic Dawn ...

). In a 2011 ''Nature'' paper, his team discovered galaxy UDFj-39546284 with a photometric redshift of ≈10 and was immediately heralded as the most distant source known in the universe. It was later estimated to have a redshift of 11.9. In 2013, he was awarded the voor de Sterrenkunde, a prize in the Netherlands given to the researcher (under the age of 40) judged to have made the most significant contribution to astronomy. In 2019, Rychard was the successful principal investigator of the REBELS ALMA Large Program, a 70-hour program to identify a substantial sample of luminous interstellar medium reservoirs in the first 800 million years of the universe at z>~6.5. Thanks to the results from the program, IIand dust were prominently detected in >~18 sources at z>~6.5. Over the course of his career, Bouwens has five published papers in ''

Nature Nature is an inherent character or constitution, particularly of the Ecosphere (planetary), ecosphere or the universe as a whole. In this general sense nature refers to the Scientific law, laws, elements and phenomenon, phenomena of the physic ...

'', two as first author, one as second author, and two for ''Nature News & Views''.

References

External links

Profile Page of Leiden University

Home Page of Rychard Bouwens

Subsidies and Prizes of Rychard Bouwens
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bouwens, Rychard 1972 births Living people 21st-century American astronomers American expatriates in the Netherlands Hope College alumni Academic staff of Leiden University UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science alumni