Steven Balbus facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Steven Balbus
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Balbus in 2016
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| Born | 23 November 1953 |
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| Thesis | The effects of thermal conduction in high temperature astrophysical gas dynamics (1981) |
Steven Andrew Balbus (born 23 November 1953) is an American astrophysicist. An astrophysicist is a scientist who studies space and the objects in it, like stars, planets, and galaxies. He is a professor at the University of Oxford in England. In 2013, he won a very important award called the Shaw Prize for his work in astronomy. He shared this prize with his colleague, John F. Hawley.
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Early Life and School
Steven Balbus was born in 1953 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States. He went to the William Penn Charter School. After that, he studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He earned degrees in both mathematics and physics from MIT in 1975. Later, in 1981, he received his PhD in theoretical astrophysics from the University of California, Berkeley.
Research and Career Highlights
After finishing his PhD, Dr. Balbus continued his research at MIT and Princeton University. In 1985, he became a professor at the University of Virginia. He then moved to Paris, France, in 2004. There, he worked as a professor in the Physics Department at the École Normale Supérieure.
In 2012, Dr. Balbus moved to Oxford, England. He became the Savilian Professor of Astronomy at the University of Oxford. This is a very old and respected position. He taught students about how gases move in space and about general relativity, which is a theory about gravity and space-time. He also guided other researchers and students. He retired from this role in October 2024.
Understanding Magnetorotational Instability (MRI)
Dr. Balbus is famous for his research in theoretical astrophysics. He made important discoveries about how gravity affects gas and dust in space. He also studied how heat works in hot, magnetized gases.
His most well-known discovery came in 1991. He and his former colleague, John F. Hawley, published a paper about something called magnetorotational instability (MRI). This discovery helped scientists understand how matter falls into black holes and forms stars. It explained how material in spinning disks around stars or black holes can lose energy and spiral inwards.
More recently, Dr. Balbus has been studying how the Sun rotates inside. He also taught a course on general relativity at the University of Oxford. Some of his lectures happened around the time scientists first detected gravitational waves in February 2016.
Awards and Special Recognitions
Dr. Balbus has received many awards for his important work.
- In 2004, he received a special award from the French Ministry of Higher Education.
- In 2013, he shared the Shaw Prize in Astronomy with John F. Hawley. This prize is one of the highest honors in astronomy. It came with a US$1 million award. The committee that chose them said their discovery of MRI solved a big mystery in astrophysics. It explained how material in spinning disks moves towards the center.
- He also received a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award.
- In April 2015, Dr. Balbus was chosen to be a member of the US National Academy of Sciences. This is a group of top scientists in the United States.
- In 2016, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in the UK. This is another very high honor for scientists.
- In 2020, he was given the Eddington Medal by the Royal Astronomical Society.
- In 2021, he received the Dirac Medal and Prize from the Institute of Physics.
- In 2023, he was honored with the Nick Kylafis Lectureship.
