Michael Williams

williams@mpe.mpg.de

Tel: +49 89 30000 3831

Max-Planck-Institut für Extraterrestrische Physik, Giessenbachstraße, D‑85748, Garching b. München

I am a Postdoctoral Fellow in Ralf Bender’s OPINAS group at MPE. I did my PhD under the supervision of Martin Bureau at Oxford. I spent the year 2009-2010 at ESO HQ working with Harald Kuntschner. In the first half of 2011 I was a visiting honorary fellow at the University of Bristol.

Travel

Research

NEW on 2011.01.27 Publications and talks

I study galaxy evolution using both observational data and theoretical models. I have measured the dark and stellar mass content of a sample of early-type (S0–Sb) disk galaxies (arXiv:0909.0680), constrained the evolutionary relationship between S0s and spirals using the Tully-Fisher relation (arXiv:1007.4072), demonstrated the pure disk nature and observed complex bar-driven dynamics of edge-on galaxies with boxy bulges (arXiv:1102.2438), and compared the radial stellar population trends of barred galaxies to those in unbarred galaxies and the predictions of models (thesis chapter now in preparation for publication).

I am now determining the IMF and dark halo contraction in a sample of 30 galaxies by comparing the results of up-to-date stellar population models to dynamical models which attempt to correctly account for dark matter.

Computing

UPDATE on 2011.08.15 mn2e.bst is a BibTeX style file that generates citations and references that conform to the requirements of MRNAS. In particular, it fixes problems with long author lists.

MPFITEXY and MPFITEXY2 are IDL routines that use the MPFIT package to fit straight lines to one or two samples of data. They determine the intrinsic scatter and support inverse regression.

Notes on the computing with OS X:

• Installing Python libraries on OS X without administrator privileges
• Installing a more reliable Fortran compiler in your home directory
• Miscellaneous tips and tricks
• Installing and maintaining MacPorts/Fink without administrator privileges The best way to install miscellaneous Unix tools and libraries is now Homebrew, which will happily live in your home directory.

I wrote a short textbook introduction to procedural programming in Python for undergradautes during my Masters project (also available under the ‘Physics’ link on the Python.org homepage).

Teaching

From 2006 to 2009 I taught the thermal physics paper to second year undergraduates at St Anne’s, where I was a Graduate Development Scholar. I wrote revision guides for the Kinetic Theory and Thermodynamics components of the course. Statistical mechanics is left as an exercise for the reader. For full notes see Steve Blundell’s page.

Other

Following an interview with Guillermo Martínez, I wrote a feature about science in literary fiction. I do film and music stuff in my spare time.