John Kormendy appointed External Scientific Member of MPE

July 24, 2012
The Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics is delighted to announce that Prof John Kormendy of the Astronomy Department of the University of Texas at Austin has been appointed an External Scientific Member of MPE. John Kormendy is world famous for his work on the structure and dynamics of galaxies as well as for his search for supermassive black holes in galaxy centres. He holds the prestigious Curtis T. Vaughn Chair in Astrophysics at the University of Texas at Austin and is an Associate Editor of the Annual Review in Astronomy and Astrophysics, the premier review publication in Astronomy.

John Kormendy has made many significant discoveries, including the relation between surface brightness and radius of elliptical galaxies named after him (the 'Kormendy-relation'), the detection of the first extragalactic supermassive black holes in nearby galaxies, the correlation between black hole mass and bulge mass, and the recognition of slow, internal evolution as a key element in the shaping of present-day galaxies.

For almost twenty years, John Kormendy has closely collaborated with Ralf Bender's group at MPE and the University Observatory of the LMU to study nearby galaxies and the black holes at their cores. He is not only a regular summer visitor at the MPE but has also spent several sabbaticals in Munich. The MPE is looking forward to strengthen ties with John Kormendy and the Astronomy Department of the University of Texas even further and anticipates many more years of exciting research together.

John Kormendy says, "I am very grateful for this high honor from the Max Planck Society. My collaboration with MPE scientists is the most enjoyable and productive of my career.  The MPE and the LMU already collaborate broadly with the University of Texas at Austin through the Hobby-Eberly Telescope project and the HET Dark Energy Experiment.  I especially welcome this further strengthening of the ties between our institutions."

Other External Scientific Members of MPE are Ewine van Dishoeck, Vladimir Fortov, Roald Sagdeev, Maarten Schmidt, Yasuo Tanaka, and Charles Townes.

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