Isabelle Baraffe, a member of the Centre de Recherche Astrophysique de Lyon (CRAL) , is a Professor of Astrophysics on secondment at the University of Exeter, United Kingdom. In October 2024, she was awarded a prize for her pioneering research in theoretical astrophysics, which has revolutionised our understanding of the structure and evolution of stars and planets.
Professor Isabelle Baraffe (University of Exeter and CRAL/CNRS/ENS de Lyon) is a pioneering theoretical astrophysicist whose research has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of the structure and evolution of stars and planets.
Baraffe has made important advances in the domain of brown dwarfs and low-mass stars. Her pioneering structure and evolution models coupled interior structures and sophisticated atmosphere models, and included state-of-the-art descriptions of the microphysics. The models have revolutionised the field, successfully explaining and indeed predicting the peculiar observational properties of these low-mass objects. Alongside her work on stellar evolution, she has made important contributions in the field of star formation, demonstrating that the early phases of accretion have a crucial impact on the evolution of young low-mass stars and brown dwarfs, long after accretion has ended.
Following the discovery of the first exoplanets, Baraffe developed a general theory that describes the inner structure, atmospheric properties and evolution of planets over the entire mass range from Earth-mass to Jupiter-mass bodies. Having pioneered the theoretical foundations for this emerging astrophysical domain, she is rightly recognised as a world leader in this field.
Most recently, Baraffe has generated multi-dimensional stellar models, based on a truly innovative numerical tool, namely the fully compressible, time-implicit, three-dimensional MUltidimensional Stellar Implicit Code (MUSIC). Funded by back-to-back European Research Council advanced grants awarded in 2013 and 2018, this groundbreaking project is now yielding exciting results that open new doors to study fundamental astrophysical and geophysical processes.
The evolution model grids produced by Baraffe are a hugely valuable resource for the global community, and are widely used to interpret observations and to develop new observational strategies. It is difficult to overemphasise the importance of this work. It is fair to say that any astronomer working in the field of exoplanets and stellar physics will be familiar with Baraffe’s research, and indeed a large fraction of them will have made use of her results in their own analyses.
Baraffe’s international profile is demonstrated by many highly cited papers and awards (Johannn Wempe Prize, Gauss Professorship, Royal Society Wolfson Merit award, Viktor Ambartsumian Prize, EAS Lodewijk Woltjer Lecture). She is a highly respected scientific leader, having held a variety of roles including membership of the Science and Technology Facilities Council, European Southern Observatory Science Advisory committee, and Scientific Advisory Board of the Max-Planck Institute of Astrophysics. She is in the highest echelons of researchers both in the UK and globally.
Fred Hoyle was an English astrophysicist who developed the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis, which describes how elements heavier than helium are produced by nuclear reactions in stars. Hoyle headed the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge University for six years, was a memeber of the Royal Society and a recipient of both the Royal Medal and the Royal Astronomical Society’s Gold Medal.
The Fred Hoyle Medal and Prize are awarded for outstanding contributions to astrophysics, gravitational physics or cosmology.
Isabelle Baraffe, Recipient of the 2024 Fred Hoyle Medal and Prize awarded by Institute of Physics (IOP)
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