Brief Biography

Before coming to Oxford, Prof. Balbus had been Professeur des Universités in the Physics Department of the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris for nine years. He was educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he took BS degrees in both mathematics and physics, and the University of California at Berkeley, where he obtained his PhD in theoretical astrophysics. He has also held academic posts at Princeton University, MIT, and the University of Virginia. Prof. Balbus's field of study is astrophysical fluid dynamics, with a particular interest in the behaviour of magnetised gases. He has made widely-recognised contributions to our understanding of accretion discs, dilute gases, and the interior of the Sun.

Prof. Balbus is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a member of the US National Academy of Sciences. In 2013, he shared the Shaw Prize in Astronomy with John Hawley for his work on accretion disc turbulence.

Research 

Astrophysical fluid and high energy astrophysics, especially accretion discs, X-ray plasmas and stellar interiors. I am also interested in palaeotides and what the fossil record reveals about their role in vertebrate evolution.