Lia Athanassoula: 2011 Brouwer Award Winner
Lia Athanassoula Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille and Observatoire Astronomique de Marseille-Provence |
Lia Athanassoula is distinguished for her perceptive work in
numerical dynamics of disk galaxies. With Sellwood in 1986, she
demonstrated how the gravitational field of the dark halo and the
velocity dispersion of the disk can both contribute to the stability
of the disk. Her studies of angular momentum transport between
galactic bars and dark halos showed how angular momentum transport can
affect the strength, shape and pattern speed of the bar: the dark halo
can make a bar become more prominent, instead of simply stabilizing
the disk against bar formation as was previously believed. Her
pioneering papers (1992ff) on gas flows and shock structures in
galactic bars, and the observable consequences made her the leading
authority on this subject. Her more recent work on the formation of
boxy and peanut-shaped bulges via bar formation is particularly useful
because of its direct application to the large amount of new
observational data on the kinematics of the Galactic bulge and boxy
bulges in external systems. Her institute in Marseille is a leading
center for research and postdoctoral training in galactic dynamics.
(Citation by Ken Freeman) |
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