Gerard F. Gilmore

website = footnotes = spouse = children = Gerard Francis Gilmore (born 7 November 1951) is a New Zealand academic who is Emeritus Professor of Experimental Philosophy, in the Institute of Astronomy, at the University of Cambridge. His research has centred on studying stars in the Galaxy to understand its structure and evolutionary history.

Education Gilmore was educated at St Bede's College, Christchurch and the University of Canterbury (both in New Zealand), where he was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in 1973.

Royal Observatory, Edinburgh Gerry Gilmore worked as a research fellow at the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, Scotland, between 1979 and 1984.

With Pavel Kroupa and Christopher Tout, Gilmore determined the numbers of low-mass stars in the disc of the Galaxy, improving on previous measurements.

During a survey of the motions of stars in the central regions of the Galaxy, Rodrigo Ibata, Gilmore and Michael Irwin found stars having radial velocities that were different to those of Galactic stars. They concluded that these belonged to a dwarf galaxy in the process of merging with our own Galaxy, and which is today called the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy.

Gilmore has collaborated with a large number of scientists, including Rosemary Wyse. He has used observations of the radial velocities of stars in the dwarf spheroidal galaxy companions of the Galaxy to determine the relative contribution of dark matter to these systems.

In 1994 he was appointed to a readership in astrophysics in the University of Cambridge. In 2000 he was promoted to professor of experimental philosophy.

Gilmore has had an important role in the design and scientific strategy of the European Space Agency's Gaia spacecraft that is measuring the positions, motions and brightnesses of millions of stars in the Galaxy.

Awards and honours Gilmore was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2013. His nomination reads:

Gilmore was awarded a Master of Arts degree and a Doctor of Science (ScD) degree from Clare Hall, Cambridge in 2002.

Selected works Mackey, A. D., and G. F. Gilmore. "Surface brightness profiles and structural parameters for 53 rich stellar clusters in the Large Magellanic Cloud." Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 338, no. 1 (2003): 85–119. Maund, Justyn R., Stephen J. Smartt, Rolf P. Kudritzki, Philipp Podsiadlowski, and Gerard F. Gilmore. "The massive binary companion star to the progenitor of supernova 1993J." Nature 427, no. 6970 (2004): 129. Watkins, L. L., N. W. Evans, Vasily Belokurov, M. C. Smith, Paul C. Hewett, Daniel M. Bramich, Gerard F. Gilmore et al. "Substructure revealed by RR Lyraes in SDSS Stripe 82." Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 398, no. 4 (2009): 1757–1770. Wilkinson, Mark I., Jan T. Kleyna, N. Wyn Evans, Gerard F. Gilmore, Michael J. Irwin, and Eva K. Grebel. "Kinematically cold populations at large radii in the Draco and Ursa minor dwarf spheroidal galaxies." The Astrophysical Journal Letters 611, no. 1 (2004): L21. Smartt, Stephen J., Justyn R. Maund, Margaret A. Hendry, Christopher A. Tout, Gerard F. Gilmore, Seppo Mattila, and Chris R. Benn. "Detection of a red supergiant progenitor star of a Type II-plateau supernova." Science 303, no. 5657 (2004): 499–503.