Carlos Frenk
Carlos Silvestre Frenk is a Mexican-British cosmologist. He has been Ogden Professor of Fundamental Physics at Durham University since 2001 and was director of the university’s Institute for Computational Cosmology from 2001 to 2020. Frenk is known for his work on galaxy formation, dark matter, and cosmological simulations.
Early life and education
Frenk was born in Mexico City, Mexico. His father was a German-Jewish physician who emigrated before the Second World War, and his mother was a Mexican pianist. His younger brother, Julio Frenk, is a physician and academic administrator.Frenk studied engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico before switching to theoretical physics, graduating in 1976 with the Gabino Barreda Medal. He moved to the University of Cambridge in 1976 on a British Council Fellowship, completing Part III of the Mathematical Tripos in 1977 and a PhD in 1981 under Bernard J. T. Jones, focusing on globular clusters.
Career
After his doctorate, Frenk worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, where he collaborated with Marc Davis on galaxy surveys. In 1983, Frenk, Davis, and Simon White published work showing that neutrinos could not account for dark matter. He later held posts at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of Sussex.With Davis, White, and George Efstathiou, Frenk helped develop early simulations supporting the cold dark matter model. A 1985 paper in The Astrophysical Journal presented the first large-scale CDM simulations.
In 1986, Frenk joined Durham University, becoming professor in 1993. In 1994 he and White co-founded the Virgo Consortium for cosmological simulations.
Navarro–Frenk–White profile
In 1996 and 1997, Frenk, White, and Julio Navarro described the Navarro–Frenk–White profile, which characterises the distribution of dark matter in halos and is widely used in cosmology.Later work
In 2001, Frenk became the first Ogden Professor of Fundamental Physics at Durham and founding director of the Institute for Computational Cosmology, a post he held until 2020. He was part of the Virgo Consortium’s Millennium Run project and continues to work on large-scale simulations of galaxy formation.Personal life
Frenk is married to Susan Frenk, a lecturer in Spanish and Latin American literature and Principal of St Aidan's College, Durham. They have two sons.Honours
Frenk was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2004. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2017 Birthday Honours for services to cosmology.He has received the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award, the Daniel Chalonge Medal, the George Darwin Lectureship, the Fred Hoyle Medal and Prize, the Gruber Prize in Cosmology, the Max Born Prize, the Dirac Medal and Prize, and the Rumford Medal.
In 2023 he was named an Honorary Fellow of King's College, Cambridge.