Jonathan (Joss) Bland-Hawthorn (born 31 May 1959 in Ide Hill, Kent, England) is a British-Australian astrophysicist. He is a Laureate professor of physics at the University of Sydney, and director of the Sydney Institute for Astronomy.
Early life and education Bland-Hawthorn was born 31 May 1959 in Ide Hill, Kent, England. He was educated at Kingham Hill School (1970–1977). He earned a degree in computer science, mathematics, and physics at the University of Birmingham before pursuing his PhD in astrophysics and astronomy at the University of Sussex and the Royal Greenwich Observatory. His dissertation, The Structure and Dynamics of the Ionised Gas within NGC 5128 (Centaurus A), was completed and approved in 1986.
Career In 1985, Bland-Hawthorn took a three-year postdoctoral position studying astrophysics at the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy. In 1988, he briefly did research at Princeton University and Institute for Advanced Study; the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; the United States Naval Research Laboratory, and the Space Telescope Science Institute before accepting a tenured professorship at Rice University in the space, physics, and astronomy department. He held this role until 1993, when he took another research fellowship, this time at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. Later that year, he moved to Australia and joined the Anglo-Australian Observatory in Sydney as a physicist until 2000, when he became the Head of Instrument Science. He was awarded with an ARC Federation Fellow Professorship in 2007 and left the Observatory to teach physics and work as Director of the Sydney Institute for Astronomy (SIfA) within the University of Sydney's School of Physics. In 2008, he was given the Muhlmann Award from the ASP and shared the inaugural Group Achievement Award from the Royal Astronomical Society with 32 colleagues including John A. Peacock, Warrick Couch, and Karl Glazebrook. In 2009, he co-founded the Institute of Photonics and Optical Science (IPOS), a collaborative group of physicists, electrical engineers, mathematicians, and chemists. The following year, he was Leverhulme Professor and visiting fellow at Merton College, Oxford. In 2011, he was a Brittingham Scholar at the University of Wisconsin. Bland-Hawthorn was awarded the Jackson-Gwilt Medal in 2012 by the Royal Astronomical Society and was made a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and the Optical Society of America. He became an ARC Laureate Fellow in 2014 and received the W.H. Steel Medal from the Australian and New Zealand Optical Society in 2015. In 2016, he was presented with the NSW Premier's Prize for Excellence in Mathematics, Earth Sciences, Chemistry and Physics for the development of the Galactic Archaeology survey, and the Astronomical Society of Australia's Peter McGregor Team Prize. In 2017, he was given the Thomas Ranken Lyle Medal by the Australian Academy of Science for the development of the fields astrophotonics and galactic archaeology. He worked at the University of California, Berkeley in 2018 as a visiting Miller Professor and is the sixth Australian to receive this honour. In 2019-21, he was a HiCi Laureate/Australian Research Leader in astronomy and astrophysics and the highest ranked physicist in Australia by Research.com. In 2021, he was awarded the Walter Boas Medal by the AIP and granted a visiting professor fellowship at École normale supérieure in Paris. In 2022, he was awarded a Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Aix-Marseille and honoured by Anti-slavery Australia for his collaborative work on novel ways to track modern slavery in supply chains. He is the Project Scientist and founder of the Sydney Astrophotonic Instrumentation Lab (SAIL) and the Director of the Sydney Institute for Astronomy, both at the University of Sydney. He was elected an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2023. Bland-Hawthorn sits on several boards, including: Astronomy Australia Limited, The Australis Board, and the Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics.
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