Professor Dr. Kenneth Freeman

Biography

Kenneth Freeman is a Duffield Professor emeritus of Astronomy at the Australian National University. He studied mathematics at the University of Western Australia and theoretical astrophysics at the University of Cambridge. Returning to Australia in 1967, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas and a research fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge. Freeman served as a Distinguished Visiting Scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in 1988 and was a Visiting Fellow at Merton College, Oxford in 1997. His research interests focus on the formation and dynamics of galaxies and globular clusters, with a particular emphasis on the dark matter problem in spiral galaxies. Freeman's recent work primarily concerns the formation dynamics of the Milky Way, particularly the ancient thick disk component. He has published about 530 refereed research papers and reviews with a citation count exceeding 49,000 and a Hirsch Index of 115. Throughout his career, he has supervised 62 PhD students. Freeman has received numerous accolades, including the Pawsey Medal from the Australian Academy of Science in 1972, the Dannie Heineman Prize from the American Institute of Physics and the American Astronomical Society in 1999, and the Prime Minister's Science Prize in 2012. He was named a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 1981 and a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1998.

Research Interests

Awards