Dr. Neal Jackson

Biography

Neal Jackson is a Reader at the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics within the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester. He obtained his Bachelor of Arts in Natural Sciences (Physics) from Cambridge University in 1986 and completed his PhD in astronomy at the University of Manchester in 1989. Following his doctoral studies, Jackson spent time as a postdoctoral researcher in Manchester before taking on a three-year postdoctoral research associate (PDRA) position at the Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands. He returned to the University of Manchester in 1994 as a temporary lecturer and achieved a permanent lectureship by 1998. His primary research interests lie in extragalactic astronomy, particularly the study of gravitational lensing—a phenomenon where light from background galaxies and quasars is deflected by galaxies aligned with the observer, resulting in multiple or distorted images of the background objects. This approach allows for the investigation of the mass distribution of the deflecting object, providing insights into dark and luminous matter. He is also involved with the CLASS gravitational lens search project, which has resulted in the discovery of 22 lenses, adding to the approximately 100 known lenses globally. Looking forward, Jackson aims to develop methods for lens discovery to obtain larger samples and is interested in the phenomenology of active galaxies and the study of nuclear regions of active galactic nuclei.

Research Interests