George K. Miley


George Kildare Miley is an Irish-Dutch astronomer. He holds a professorship at Leiden University, where he served as director of Leiden Observatory from 1996 to 2003.

Biography

After studying at Gonzaga College, Miley obtained his BSc in physics at University College Dublin in the years 1959–1963, going on to complete a PhD in radio astronomy at the University of Manchester in 1968. He then became a research associate and assistant scientist at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory until 1970, when he moved to Leiden Observatory as a senior scientist.
Miley has filled various positions in Leiden until the present day: He became astronomy professor at Leiden University in 1988, served as the observatory's scientific director 1996–2003, was appointed to a Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Professorship 2003–2008 and continues to serve as a professor of astronomy. While Miley remained anchored in Leiden, he accepted several visiting posts: He was as visiting professor at Lick Observatory 1977–1978, and a visiting scientist for the infrared astronomy satellite IRAS at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory 1981–1982. From 1984 to 1988, he was senior astronomer and head of academic affairs at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, as well as an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University.
Miley served as vice-president of the International Astronomical Union from 2006 to 2012, where his focus was on astronomy and development.

Research

In Manchester, Miley was active at Nuffield Radio Astronomy Laboratories in radio astronomy, where he was involved in developing long-baseline interferometry, a high-resolution technique that Miley used to study the properties of quasars. Miley continued this research during his stay at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, establishing a relation between the size and distance of quasars.
Upon his transfer to Leiden, Miley began to work at the newly-completed Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope. In collaboration with the research group of Harry van der Laan, Miley used the WSRT to study distant radio galaxies, discovered head-tail radio galaxies in clusters and also pinpointed the position of the x-ray source Cygnus X-1, a black hole within our own galaxy.
Miley's sabbatical at Lick Observatory marked his transition from a radio astronomer to a multi-wavelength astronomer, aided by the development of digital astronomical cameras in the 1970s. While researching the "reddest" radio galaxies in the radio and optical regimes, he was involved in the discovery of some of the most distant galaxies known at the time. He expanded his wavelength range further by joining the science team responsible for the infrared satellite IRAS, working on the mission's pioneering deep infrared surveys. After his return to Leiden, Miley combined his knowledge of techniques optical and infrared astronomy to study further both radio galaxies and the gas that surrounds such galaxies, discovering some of the first cosmic evolution effects known for this class of galaxies.
While Miley's move to the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore was motivated by a desire to observe with the Hubble Space Telescope, the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster delayed the space telescope's launch, he stayed on as the institute Head of Academic Affairs, continuing his research on high-redshift radio galaxies. After his return to Leiden as a professor in 1988, Miley and his colleagues demonstrated that bright radio galaxies could be used as beacons to locate the first galaxy clusters in the universe, allowing astronomers to examine previously unexplored structures in the early universe.
In 1997, Miley wrote a proposal for a new kind of low-frequency radio telescope, which would allow for an exploration of even earlier eras of the universe. Construction for this telescope, which Miley had dubbed LOFAR, for Low Frequency Array, began in 2006, led by the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy ASTRON. When the antenna was completed in 2017, it consisted of a phased array of 20,000 single antennae in 48 stations, located in the Netherlands, Germany, France, Poland, Great Britain, and Ireland.

Education and development

Miley is an active academic teacher, having supervised more than 25 PhD theses since 1978. In 2004, he began to set up an astronomy education program aimed at inspiring young children in 2004, which eventually grew into the Universe Awareness educational program, a Cornerstone project of the UN-ratified IAU/UNESCO International Year of Astronomy in 2009.
In 1973 Miley went on a lecture tour of China as the first astronomer to visit China after the cultural revolution. During his term as vice-president of the International Astronomical Union, Miley designed the IAU strategic plan "Astronomy for Development," whose aim is to "contribute globally to education at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels and can enable less
developed, poorer countries to participate in cutting-edge scientific research." The strategic plan was adopted at the IAU General Assembly in Rio de Janeiro in August 2009. As part of the plan's implementation, the IAU established an Office of Astronomy for Development at the South African Astronomical Observatory in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2011. For the creation and establishment of OAD, its director Kevin Govender and the IAU were jointly awarded the Edinburgh Medal in 2016.

Honors and awards