Professor Malcolm Bremer

  • Professor Malcolm Bremer
    Professor

Biography

I studied Physics at the University of London (QMC) and then carried out a PhD in Astrophysics at the IoA in Cambridge. After fellowships in Leiden (Sterrewacht Leiden) and Paris (IAP) I joined the University of Bristol as a lecturer in Physics, and, since 2009, as a Professor of Physics.

I am predominantly an observational astrophysicist with an interest in the evolution of galaxies and galaxy clusters. Although my work has utilised the entire electromagnetic spectrum, I specialise in optical and near-IR observations, both imaging and spectroscopy.

Research interests

Over my career, I have carried out work on a wide range of topics including:

  • The gaseous and cluster environments of quasars.
  • Identifying the most distant radio sources (at a time when this was the most efficient way of identifying the most and galaxies).
  • Identifying and exploring emission from warm molecular gas in cooling flow/cool-core clusters.
  • Pioneering the use of the Lyman-break technique using ground-based data in identifying galaxies at a redshift of 5 (when the universe was only ~ 1 billion years old), at a time when this was the frontier for reliably detecting young galaxies.
  • Identifying distant galaxy clusters in X-ray surveys and proto-clusters around Active Galactic Nuclei and starburst galaxies and characterising their galaxy populations.
  • Exploring the population of galaxies in the nearby universe transitioning from an active star forming phase into quiescence and the mechanisms that cause this to happen.
  • Demonstrating that the UV upturn population in early type galaxies takes 6-8 billion years to form, indicating it is a post main sequence stellar population and one which given the chemistry of the host galaxies likely has to have a very high helium abundance. This is something largely ignored in the general understanding of these galaxies and may have a significant role to play in explaining the recent JWST discovery of large number of highly luminous galaxies seen within a few hundred million years of the Big Bang.

I have authored and co-authored approximately 200 papers in refereed journals and you can see my ADS Library

for details.

Over my career I have been involved in multiple bodies that influenced and steered the UK contribution to large projects, both in astronomy and in other STFC-related fundamental science. A subset of these include:

  • Member of the UK-ESO in-kind working group which helped facilitate the UK joining ESO.
  • UK representative on ESO's user committee and Gemini's Science Committee.
  • Long-term member of UK steering committee for the ELT (overseeing the UK contribution to ESO's ELT instrumentation).
  • Member and latterly chair of the UK MOONS oversight committee (oversight of UK component of constructing a large spectrograph for ESO).
  • Chair of STFC's Project Peer Review Panel (PPRP), reviewing proposals and advising on funding (with a total budget of many £10s millions per annum) for UK involvement in instrumentation projects in Astronomy, Particle Physics, Nuclear Physics and Accelerator Physics.

Current Researchers and PhD Students

Former Researchers and PhD Students at Bristol

  • Cale Baguley (PhD, 2018-2023. Now a postdoc in Bioscience, University of Bristol)
  • Sadman Ali (PhD, 2015-2018. Now an astronomer, NAOJ, Japan)
  • Kate Husband (PhD, 2011-2015. Now in industry)
  • Luke Davies (PhD, 2008-2012. Now an Australian Research Council Future Fellow and Associate Professor, ICRAAR, Australia)
  • Kaz Winkworth (PhD, 2006-2010. Now in industry)
  • Laura Douglas (PhD, 2004-2008. Medical physicist (deceased))
  • Kurt Baker (PhD, 2002-2005. Now a Teacher)
  • Jordi Barr (PhD, 1999-2003. Now in industry)