Annette Ferguson

Annette Mairi Nelson Ferguson FRSE
Born	Dumbarton, Scotland
Nationality	Scottish
Alma mater	University of Toronto Johns Hopkins University
Awards	Annie J. Cannon Award in Astronomy (2003) Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (2017)
Scientific career
Fields	astronomy
Institutions	University of Edinburgh

Professor Annette Mairi Nelson Ferguson FRSE is a Scottish observational astronomer who specializes in the area of galaxy evolution. She is a professor at the Institute for Astronomy, Edinburgh.

Career

Her research focuses on conducting observations of stars and interstellar gas in nearby galaxies to gain insights into the formation and evolution of systems in the Milky Way. Much of her recent work has focused on the Andromeda Galaxy, a giant spiral galaxy in our galactic neighbourhood. Her research exploits ground-based telescopes in the Canary Islands, Chile, and Hawaii as well as sophisticated instruments on board the Hubble Space Telescope.

Originally from Scotland, Ferguson graduated with a bachelor's degree in physics and astronomy from the University of Toronto and a doctorate in astrophysics from the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. She previously held postdoctoral fellowships at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute in Groningen, Netherlands, and was a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow at the Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik in Garching, Germany.

Honours

Ferguson received the Annie J. Cannon Award in 2003 and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's National Academy for science and letters, in March 2016. In 2017 she received the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award from Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.