Bryan Gaensler


Bryan Malcolm Gaensler is an Australian astronomer and former Young Australian of the Year, currently based at the University of Toronto. He studies magnetars, supernova remnants and magnetic fields. On 10 June 2014, it was announced that Gaensler was appointed as Director of the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of Toronto, after James R. Graham's departure. Gaensler is currently the co-chair of the Canadian 2020 Long Range Plan Committee with Pauline Barmby.

Education

Gaensler was born in Sydney, Australia. He attended Sydney Grammar School, and studied at the University of Sydney, graduating with a BSc with first class honours in physics, followed by a PhD in astrophysics.

Career

From 1998 to 2001, Gaensler held a Hubble Fellowship at the Center for Space Research of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2001 he moved to the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory as a Clay Fellow. In 2002, he took up an appointment as an assistant professor in the Department of Astronomy at Harvard University.
In 2006, he moved back to Sydney as an Australian Research Council Federation Fellow in the School of Physics at the University of Sydney and in 2011 he was also appointed Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for All-Sky Astrophysics. In June 2014, Gaensler announced that he would be leaving CAASTRO and taking up a position as director of the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at The University of Toronto commencing in January 2015.
Gaensler was Editor-in-Chief of Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia from 2009 to 2014. Gaensler’s contributions to PASA included redefining the scope of the journal to move away from accepting conference summaries and ‘intermediate results’, moving to Cambridge University Press as publisher, and introducing the Dawes Reviews, named after early Australian astronomer of William Dawes.

Research

In 1997, Gaensler showed that many supernova remnants are aligned with the magnetic field of the Milky Way like "cosmic compasses". In 2000, he and Dale Frail calculated that some pulsars are much older than previously believed. In 2004, Gaensler used the Chandra X-ray Observatory to make the first detailed study of the behavior of high-energy particles around a fast moving pulsar.
In 2005, Gaensler was reported to have solved the mystery of why some supernova explosions form magnetars while others form ordinary pulsars. Later that year, he and his colleagues observed one of the brightest explosions ever observed in the history of astronomy, resulting from a sudden pulse of gamma rays from the magnetar SGR 1806-20. In 2005, Gaensler also reported puzzling new observations of the Large Magellanic Cloud, showing that powerful but unknown forces were at work in maintaining this galaxy's magnetic field.
Gaensler was formerly the international project scientist for the Square Kilometre Array, a next-generation radio telescope. Gaensler is a member of the SKA Magnetism Science Working Group.

Public Outreach

In 2011, Gaensler published his first book, Extreme Cosmos. He was Patron of Macarthur Astronomical Society in SW Sydney, Australia from 2009 to 2020.

Honours and awards