C. Marcella Carollo facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
C. Marcella Carollo
|
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
Palermo, Italy
|
| Nationality | Italian and Swiss |
| Alma mater | Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (PhD) |
| Known for | Galaxy formation and evolution Extragalactic astronomy |
| Spouse(s) | Simon Lilly |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Astronomy Astrophysics |
| Institutions | ETH Zürich Leiden University |
C. Marcella Carollo is an important scientist who studied the universe. She worked as a professional astronomer for 25 years, from 1994 to 2019. She is known for her work in understanding how galaxies form and change over time. She also studied objects far beyond our own galaxy.
Contents
Becoming an Astronomer
Carollo started her studies at the University of Palermo in Italy. In 1987, she earned a degree in physics. She focused on biophysics, which is the study of physics in living things.
After working for more than four years, she decided to continue her education. She began her PhD in astrophysics at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany. She finished her PhD in 1994.
Her Journey in Science
Early Career and Fellowships
After getting her PhD, Carollo received a special award called a European Community Prize Fellowship. She used this fellowship to work at Leiden University in the Netherlands from 1994 to 1996.
Later, she received another important award: a Hubble Postdoctoral Fellowship. She held this fellowship at Johns Hopkins University in the United States from 1997 to 1999.
Becoming a Professor
In 1999, Carollo became an Assistant Professor at Columbia University in New York. She taught and did research there until 2002.
That year, she moved to ETH Zürich in Switzerland. She became an Associate Professor there. Her husband, Simon Lilly, also joined ETH Zürich at the same time. In 2007, she was promoted to a Full Professor.
Contributions and Awards
Carollo helped develop a special camera called WFC3. This camera was installed on the famous Hubble Space Telescope in 2009. It helps scientists take amazing pictures of space.
In 2012, she was recognized as one of the "Top Italian Scientists" by VIA Academy. The next year, in 2013, she won the Winton Capital Research Prize. In 2018, she was named a "Highly Cited Researcher." This means her research papers were often used and referenced by other scientists.
What She Studied
Carollo's main work in astronomy focused on extragalactic astronomy. This is the study of objects outside our own Milky Way galaxy. She was especially interested in galaxy formation and evolution. This field tries to understand how galaxies are born and how they change over billions of years.
Early Discoveries
Her early research helped us understand how the amount of heavy elements (called metallicity) changes within galactic spheroids. These are the central, round parts of galaxies. She also showed that dark matter halos exist far beyond the visible parts of galaxies. Dark matter is a mysterious substance that we can't see but know is there because of its gravity.
Carollo also played a key role in finding and describing "disk-like bulges" and "nuclear massive star clusters." These are special features found in disk galaxies, like our own Milky Way.
Later Research
Later, Carollo and her team at ETH Zürich studied how a galaxy's surroundings affect its growth. They also looked at how massive galaxies stopped forming new stars (a process called "quenching") when the universe was much younger.
Her group also helped discover and describe some of the most distant galaxies ever found. These galaxies existed during a very early time in the universe's history, known as the reionization epoch. Studying these distant galaxies helps us understand the very first moments after the Big Bang.
