Katherine Blundell


Katherine Mary Blundell is a Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford and a research fellow at St John's College, Oxford. Previously, she held a Royal Society University Research Fellowship, and fellowships from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 and Balliol College, Oxford.

Education

Blundell was educated at the University of Cambridge where she was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree followed by a PhD in 1995 for research on radio galaxies and quasars.

Research and career

Blundell's research investigates the physics of active galaxies – such as quasars. She also studies objects in the Milky Way such as microquasars which produce astrophysical jets of plasma that emit radio waves and move at speeds close to the speed of light.
Blundell is founder of the Global Jet Watch project, which records spectroscopic measurements of microquasars such as SS 433. The project uses five Ritchey–Chrétien telescopes separated in longitude around the earth so that at any time at least one of them is in night-time. Two of the telescopes are located in Australia, with one each in India, South Africa and Chile.
Blundell's work has been funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council, the Royal Society and the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851. Her collaborators have included Steven Balbus, Steven Rawlings, Roger Llewelyn Davies, Stephen Blundell and Fraser A. Armstrong.
Blundell is the author or co-author of several books including Black Holes : A Very Short Introduction, Concepts in Thermal Physics and Energy... beyond Oil.

Awards and honours

Blundell was appointed Order of the British Empire in the 2017 Birthday Honours for services to astronomy and the education of young people. She was awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize in Astrophysics in 2005, the Rosalind Franklin Award from the Royal Society in 2010, the Lawrence Bragg Medal and Prize from the Institute of Physics in 2012 and the George Darwin Lectureship from the Royal Astronomical Society in 2015.