Professor Catherine Heymans
 

I am the Astronomer Royal for Scotland. I'm a Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Edinburgh and the Director of the German Centre for Cosmological Lensing at the Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany.

Read about my research in two magazine articles, Seeing the Invisible and What is the nature of the dark Universe?, published in Physics World. You can also download and read my short e-book on The Dark Universe published by the Institute of Physics as part of the Physics World Discovery Collection, an ideal starting point for anyone seeking to understand rapidly evolving fields.

If you love Astronomy and have always wanted to learn more, join our Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) called AstroTech: The Science and Technology behind Astronomical Discovery. It's completely free and suitable for students of all ages and abilities!

My research is supported by the European Research Council under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement number 647112). As part of that research I have the pleasure of working with the KiDS, CFHTLenS and RCSLenS surveys, three of the largest deep ground-based surveys in existence. All of these surveys are ideal for my main area of research into the Dark Universe using weak gravitational lensing.


If you're interested in what life is like as an astronomer, you can watch this short BBC film or watch me talk at TEDx Edinburgh in 2014:

and TEDx Glasgow at the SEC Armadillo in 2018: Those interested in the interplay between art, architecture and science can watch Are we darkened by light? at the Tate Modern. If you're interested in Philosophy, listen to my Philosophy for our times podcast on the Multiverse.

If you are interested in the Dark Universe you can watch an evening dialogue filmed at the Aspen Center for Physics in Colorado by Grassroots TV, watch a public lecture filmed at the BBVA Foundation in Madrid, or watch my 2017 Darwin lecture for the Royal Astronomical Society:

For the more expert audience you can watch one of the Heidelberg Joint Astronomical Colloquiums:

 
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