Martin Bureau
Lindemann Fellow and Tutor in Physics
Biography
Professor Martin Bureau is Lindemann Fellow and Tutor in Physics at Wadham, and Professor in Astrophysics within the Department of Physics.
In addition to pastoral care and recently acting as College Dean, Martin mainly tutors the first year Physics curriculum (Mechanics, Circuit Theory, Special Relativity, Electromagnetism, Optics) and occasionally the second year Statistical Mechanics paper. Within the Physics Department, Martin was recently Head of Finals' Examiners and supervises PhD students in Oxford and abroad.
Martin’s research centres on the formation and evolution of galaxies, primarily through detailed studies of (samples of) nearby systems, this across the whole electromagnetic spectrum. His research primarily exploits integral-field spectrographs and synthesis imaging, yielding three-dimensional observations of galaxies. Current projects include weighing the supermassive black holes lurking in galaxy centres, and characterising the nature of galaxies when our universe was only half its current age.
Before joining Wadham, Martin was a NASA Hubble Fellow within the Department of Astronomy at Columbia University, New York City, and a postdoctoral fellow at Leiden Observatory, part of the University of Leiden, the Netherlands. He obtained his PhD at Mount Stromlo and Siding Spring Observatories (now the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics), part of The Institute of Advanced Studies of The Australian National University, Australia. He obtained his B.Sc. from the Physics Department of the Université de Montreal.
Research Interests
Structure, dynamics, stellar populations, interstellar medium, formation, and evolution of galaxies.
Courses Taught
Undergraduate tutoring: first year Mechanics, Circuit Theory, Special Relativity, Electromagnetism, Optics; second year Statistical Mechanics
Graduate teaching: Astrophysics graduate lecture series.