Bruce Elmegreen

Stay at the IAC: 25/10/2014 al 16/11/2014
Research line: Formation and Evolution of Galaxies

Dr. Bruce Elmegreen works in the Physical Sciences Department of the Research Division of IBM (IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, USA). He joined IBM in 1984 after holding a faculty position at Columbia University. He received his Ph.D. at Princeton University under the guidance of Lyman Spitzer, Jr., and then spent three years as a Junior Fellow at Harvard.

His main interests in Astrophysics include star formation, interstellar matter, and galactic structure. Through a combination of observations, analysis, and computer modeling, he has proposed and developed models for triggered and spontaneous star formation processes in normal galaxy disks. His recent work on hierarchical structure in turbulent gas has applications to long-standing problems on the mass distributions and spatial arrangements of interstellar clouds and the stars they form.

Debra and Bruce Elmegreen maintain a regular collaboration with several research groups at the IAC. Their stay in this center has served to strengthen the existing bonds and has allowed a new generation of students and postdocs to relate directly with them. In particular, one of the objectives of their visit is to work with Johan Knapen and collaborators in the structure and evolution of nearby galaxies, in the fossil remains of the formation of their discs, and in how massive stars are produced within the spiral arms.

During their visit to the IAC, profs. Elmegreen also collaborated with Casiana Muñoz-Tuñón, Jorge Sánchez Almeida and the rest of their group in studies of galaxy formation fueled by gas filaments that come directly from the cosmic web. This collaboration seeks an observational evidence that the accretion of pristine gas is responsible for the growth of galaxies, such as the cosmological models predict.