Mark Swinbank
Anthony Mark Swinbank is a British astronomer. He is Professor of Physics at Durham University, where he specializes in the study of galaxy formation and evolution.
Early life and education
Swinbank is from Sedgefield, County Durham. He earned his PhD from Durham University in 2005.Career and research
Swinbank stayed on at Durham as a research fellow within the Institute for Computational Cosmology following the completion of his PhD. From 2008 to 2011 he undertook a Norman Lockyer Research Fellowship. He was the lead author of a 2009 study that found the universe's infant galaxies 'enjoyed rapid growth spurts' and formed stars at a rate of up to 50 stars per year, which was higher than previously assumed.In 2013, Swinback received the Fowler Award from the Royal Astronomical Society. That year he was also awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize for work on galaxy formation and evolution, gravitational lensing, and star formation. In 2019, Swinbank led a team at the European Southern Observatory in Chile that discovered a faraway galaxy 'forming stars at a rate of 250 Suns per year' via the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment telescope.