Joseph Silk

This article is about the British astronomer. For the British recipient of the George Cross, see Harry Silk.

Joseph Ivor Silk is the Savilian Chair of Astronomy at the University of Oxford. He came back to the UK in 1999 to take up the position, following a nearly 30-year career at the University of California, Berkeley. He was educated at Tottenham County School (1954-1960) and Cambridge University (1960-1963)^{[citation needed]}. He held distinguished positions in Munich, Paris, Groningen and Baltimore. Professor Silk, a post-graduate of Harvard, has given more than two hundred invited conference lectures, primarily on galaxy formation and cosmology.

He is a Fellow of New College, Oxford. and a Fellow of the Royal Society (elected May 1999)

Honours

• 2011: Balzan Prize for his works on the early Universe.

Silk damping

Main article: Diffusion damping

The structure of the cosmic microwave background anisotropies is principally determined by two effects: acoustic oscillations and diffusion damping (also called collisionless damping or Silk damping). The latter is named Silk damping after Joseph Silk.

Publications

Silk has over 500 publications, of which 3 have been cited over 400 times, 20 have been published in Nature and 11 in Science.

Books by Joseph Silk

• On the Shores of the Unknown: A Short History of the Universe, Cambridge University Press, 2005, ISBN 0521836271, Google Link
• The Big Bang , W.H. Freeman, 2005, ISBN 071671812X
• Cosmic Enigmas , Springer, 1994, ISBN 1563960613, Google Link

External links

• Professor Joe Silk homepage