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Warrick Couch
Warrick John Couch (born 1954) is an Australian professional astronomer. He is a professor at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne. He was previously the Director of Australia's largest optical observatory, the Australian Astronomical Observatory (AAO). He was also the president of the Australian Institute of Physics (2015–2017), and a non-executive director on the Board of the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization. He was a founding non-executive director of Astronomy Australia Limited.
His principal research area is the study of how galaxies form and evolve, with a particular focus on the role that their environment plays. This research has involved major observational programs using many of the largest ground-based optical telescopes (Gemini, VLT, AAT, ESO 3.6m, NTT) as well as space-based telescopes (Hubble, Chandra, ROSAT).
Couch is recognized as one of the most highly cited researchers in his field. He was a member of the Supernova Cosmology Project, where his research contributed to the Nobel Prize winning work on the accelerating expansion of the universe, he was a joint winner of the Gruber Prize in Cosmology in 2007 for his role in the discovery of the accelerating universe, and a joint winner of the 2015 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics which "recognizes major insights into the deepest questions of the Universe". He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand.
Couch was born in Lower Hutt, in the Wellington Region on the North Island of New Zealand. His mother was a qualified teacher, and his father was a surveyor with interests in geophysics and astronomy, who later changed his career to become involved in geodetic computing. Describing his childhood in an interview, he said that he "came from a middle class family with lots of books in the house and parents who were very keen on [him] learning to play the piano." He read detective stories and adventure novels, and tinkered with mechanical things including Meccano and wood work. He excelled at mathematics and physics at school, and he developed an interest in astronomy while he attended university.
His undergraduate studies were conducted at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand. He received his BSc (Hons, 1st class) in Physics in 1976. He immediately commenced his MSc in astrophysics, graduating in 1977 with his thesis titled: Interpretation of photometry on pulsating stars.
He qualified for a British Commonwealth Scholarship and moved to Canberra, Australia, where he studied for his PhD in astrophysics at the Australian National University's (ANU's) Mount Stromlo and Siding Spring Observatories.
His doctoral research involved a detailed study of the colours of galaxies in distant rich clusters, which led to the first independent confirmation of the Butcher–Oemler Effect – the discovery that rich clusters contained many more blue galaxies in the past (compared to the present day), which at the time was quite controversial. He graduated in 1982 with his thesis titled The colour evolution of galaxies in clusters.
In 1982, having received his doctorate, Couch moved to the University of Durham in England, where he worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the observational cosmology group. Their main aim was to better understand the physical properties of the stars in distant "blue" cluster galaxies. This involved the development of several key technical innovations to better determine the galaxies' spectral energy distributions, especially the world's first optical fibre multi-object spectrograph on the AAT, which simultaneously gathered high quality spectra for large numbers of these faint galaxies in distant clusters. The results were unexpected: according to Couch, "the galaxies had undergone quite a dramatic star formation event... For some reason the galaxy switched on, formed stars at a great rate for a certain short period of time, and then got cut off."
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Warrick Couch
Warrick John Couch (born 1954) is an Australian professional astronomer. He is a professor at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne. He was previously the Director of Australia's largest optical observatory, the Australian Astronomical Observatory (AAO). He was also the president of the Australian Institute of Physics (2015–2017), and a non-executive director on the Board of the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization. He was a founding non-executive director of Astronomy Australia Limited.
His principal research area is the study of how galaxies form and evolve, with a particular focus on the role that their environment plays. This research has involved major observational programs using many of the largest ground-based optical telescopes (Gemini, VLT, AAT, ESO 3.6m, NTT) as well as space-based telescopes (Hubble, Chandra, ROSAT).
Couch is recognized as one of the most highly cited researchers in his field. He was a member of the Supernova Cosmology Project, where his research contributed to the Nobel Prize winning work on the accelerating expansion of the universe, he was a joint winner of the Gruber Prize in Cosmology in 2007 for his role in the discovery of the accelerating universe, and a joint winner of the 2015 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics which "recognizes major insights into the deepest questions of the Universe". He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand.
Couch was born in Lower Hutt, in the Wellington Region on the North Island of New Zealand. His mother was a qualified teacher, and his father was a surveyor with interests in geophysics and astronomy, who later changed his career to become involved in geodetic computing. Describing his childhood in an interview, he said that he "came from a middle class family with lots of books in the house and parents who were very keen on [him] learning to play the piano." He read detective stories and adventure novels, and tinkered with mechanical things including Meccano and wood work. He excelled at mathematics and physics at school, and he developed an interest in astronomy while he attended university.
His undergraduate studies were conducted at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand. He received his BSc (Hons, 1st class) in Physics in 1976. He immediately commenced his MSc in astrophysics, graduating in 1977 with his thesis titled: Interpretation of photometry on pulsating stars.
He qualified for a British Commonwealth Scholarship and moved to Canberra, Australia, where he studied for his PhD in astrophysics at the Australian National University's (ANU's) Mount Stromlo and Siding Spring Observatories.
His doctoral research involved a detailed study of the colours of galaxies in distant rich clusters, which led to the first independent confirmation of the Butcher–Oemler Effect – the discovery that rich clusters contained many more blue galaxies in the past (compared to the present day), which at the time was quite controversial. He graduated in 1982 with his thesis titled The colour evolution of galaxies in clusters.
In 1982, having received his doctorate, Couch moved to the University of Durham in England, where he worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the observational cosmology group. Their main aim was to better understand the physical properties of the stars in distant "blue" cluster galaxies. This involved the development of several key technical innovations to better determine the galaxies' spectral energy distributions, especially the world's first optical fibre multi-object spectrograph on the AAT, which simultaneously gathered high quality spectra for large numbers of these faint galaxies in distant clusters. The results were unexpected: according to Couch, "the galaxies had undergone quite a dramatic star formation event... For some reason the galaxy switched on, formed stars at a great rate for a certain short period of time, and then got cut off."