Garik Israelian is an Armenian-Spanish astrophysicist and scientist. Founder of Starmus Festival. He led the team which found the first observational evidence that supernova explosions are responsible for the formation of stellar mass black holes.
Israelian has since worked as a lecturer and researcher in Utrecht, Brussels, and Sydney. Since 1997 he has worked at the Institute of Astrophysics, Canary Islands, and as a professor at the University of La Laguna, Tenerife. Israelian has published more than 250 scientific articles on subjects ranging from the discovery of extrasolar planets to the properties of low mass x-ray binaries with black holes and neutron stars. Brian May credits Israelian in his PhD thesis as "... my prime collaborator in resuming this work... more than anyone else responsible for helping me through the final stages of this PhD work". Two hundred years after the original idea by John Michell regarding the existence of black holes in the Universe, Israelian led an international collaboration based on data collected with the 10m Keck telescope in Hawaii, which provided the first observational evidence that supernova explosions are responsible for the formation of black holes. This was cited by Stephen Hawking on his lecture at Starmus II. Also discussed by Nobel Prize physicist Hans Bethe and review by Dennis Sciama and collaborators. In 2001 he proposed the so-called "Lithium-6 test" aiming to check if a star has engulfed a planet or other gaseous or solid matter. An international team of scientists led by Israelian has provided the explanation of anomaly low abundance of lithium in the atmosphere of the Sun, and linked this fact with the presence of planets in the solar system. 2001-2003 Israelian gave 30 hours post-graduate course on Radiation Transfer, Stellar Atmospheres and Spectroscopy at the Universities of Tokyo, Japan and Geneva, Switzerland. Visiting professor at Caltech, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Observatory of Trieste and more. Invited talks at more than 30 international conferences. In 2009 Israelian was invited to speak at TED Global in Oxford. In June 2016, Israelian appeared on Larry King Now with Stephen Hawking to discuss Starmus Festival, artificial intelligence, and cosmology.
In 2005, Garik Israelian compiled a unique library of acoustic sound waves produced within the bodies of stars. This research project inspired Dr. Israelian to join forces with Dr. Brian May, astrophysicist and legendary guitarist of the band Queen, to create a new festival that would bring the stars together with music, and so Starmus was born. The main concept of the "Starsounds" project was explained in the lecture of Dr. Israelian "Our Acoustic Universe" and published in the book "50 Years of Man in Space". "Starsounds" have been used by Brian May and Tangerine Dream in their composition "Supernovae". . In 2016 Garik Israelian made a selection from his library of stellar recordings and turned them over to Brian Eno who arranged them into a new composition. Dr. Israelian invited Paul Franklin and Oliver James of DNEG, the world-leading Oscars winning film visual effects studio, to create images that responded to the mysterious promise of the music. The result is "Starsounds", a hypnotic piece rich with complex harmonies and mesmerizing visuals. "Starsounds" is being made available on the internet for the first time so that everyone can enjoy the work of Dr Israelian, Brian Eno, Paul Franklin, Oliver James and DNEG.
Nominated by Swiss Academy of Sciences, Israelian, Michel Mayor and Nuno Santos were awarded the 2010 Victor Ambartsumian International Prize for Astrophysics, Physics or Mathematics. In 2014, Israelian received The Canary Islands Gold Medal awarded by the Government of Canary Islands. This is the highest recognition on the Canary Islands awarded to people or companies for efforts for the benefit of the Canary Islands society. On 20 June 2016 the International Astronomical Union and the Minor Planet Center officially renamed asteroid 21057 to Garik Israelian in honor of Israelian. The citation was written by astronomer Joel Parker and Queen guitarist Brian May, and presented by them at the Starmus Festival.
