Press Release

NAS RA V. Ambartsumian Byurakan Astrophysical Observatory (BAO)
Press release 10.2023

GARIK ISRAELIAN’S 60TH ANNIVERSARY

Dr. Garik L. Israelian, a famous Armenian-Spanish astronomer working at the Institute of Astrophysics in Canary Islands (IAC), celebrated his 60th anniversary on October 3. Dr. Garik Israelian, born in 1963, graduated with First Class Honours in 1987 (Yerevan State University, Armenia) and completed his PhD at the Byurakan Astrophysical Observatory in 1992. Since then he has worked as a researcher in the Universities of Utrecht (The Netherlands), Brussels (Belgium) and Sydney (Australia). In 2000, he became a Principal Investigator of the project “Stellar chemical abundances: clues on the formation of the Galaxy, black holes and planets” at IAC. The IAC is one of the most important centers of astrophysics operating the largest telescope in the world: the 10.4m GTC. Israelian’s discoveries were covered by BBC, CNN, TVE etc, and reflected in special publications in dozens of national (Spanish) and international newspapers and magazines (New York Times, Der Spiegel, Science News, Scientific American etc.). Dr. Israelian has supervised five Doctoral dissertations, and lectured 32 hours post-graduate courses on Stellar Atmospheres and Radiation Transfer at the Universities of Geneva (Switzerland) and Tokyo (Japan). He is a trusted referee of the magazines Nature, Science, Astrophysical Journal etc. One of the most important scientific contributions of Dr. Israelian is considered the article published in 1999 in Nature. 200 years after the original idea by John Michell regarding the existence of black holes in the Universe, Dr. Israelian led an international collaboration, which provided the first observational evidence that supernovae explosions may be responsible for the formation of black holes (John Cowan, Nature, 401, 124, 1999). This discovery was considered by Hans Bethe as “one of the most important discovery in black hole astrophysics”. Dr. Israelian has served on numerous astronomy committees and panels. He has presented invited talks, reviews and contribution talks at more than 50 international conferences. Since 2000 he has collaborated with Michel Mayor’s team at Geneva University (Switzerland) and Nuno Santos with whom he has published more than 30 scientific articles. They have made several groundbreaking discoveries related to the properties of stars with extrasolar planetary systems. In 2010, they were awarded the first Viktor Ambartsumian International Prize.

On behalf of the Armenian Astronomical Society we wish him good health and success and new scientific achievements.

Meline Asryan