Matt Taylor

Matthew Graham George Thaddeus Taylor (born 1973) is a British astrophysicist employed by the European Space Agency. He is best known to the public for his involvement in the Rosetta mission, the first mission to make landfall on a comet. Taylor was the mission's project scientist.

Early life Taylor was born in Manor Park, London, in 1973. He is the son of a bricklayer, and worked alongside his father on building sites during his summer breaks from university.

Education Taylor received a degree in physics from the University of Liverpool. He then earned a PhD in space physics from Imperial College London, focusing on magnetohydrodynamic modelling of astrophysical plasma in the magnetosphere.

Career Taylor's research career began when he became a research fellow at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory working on the Cluster mission. This position led to his appointment as Cluster project scientist in 2005. In summer 2013, Taylor became a project scientist for the Rosetta mission. In 2018, he was awarded the Royal Astronomical Society Service Award for Geophysics for his work on the mission.

Taylor is an author on 70 publications, primarily on the topic of aurorae. the Journal of Geophysical Research, Geophysical Research Letters and the Annales Geophysicae.

Personal life Taylor's wife is Leanne. They have two children. He wrote the foreword to David Vincent's biography I Am Morbid: Ten Lessons Learned From Extreme Metal, Outlaw Country, and the Power of Self-Determination.

Taylor has a tattoo of the Rosetta spacecraft and its lander on his leg, which he had done after the craft was successfully woken from hibernation in 2014.