Cesarsky Symposium

Welcome

On June 14 & 15, 2021, we will celebrate Catherine Cesarsky’s extraordinary career spanning 50 years of astronomy since she defended her PhD in Harvard.

After a first phase of her career mainly devoted to theoretical work, Catherine turned to the observation of galaxy evolution. She studied the propagation of cosmic rays, and developed a model based on resonant interactions of cosmic rays with hydromagnetic waves, in relation with interstellar turbulence and the heating of the interstellar medium. Later, she established an upper limit to the energy that cosmic rays can gain through diffusive acceleration in a supernova shock. As principal investigator of the ISOCAM camera on board ESA's Infrared Space Observatory, she led the large programs that discovered a new population of distant star-forming, heavily dust-obscured that have played a major role in the cosmic history.
Catherine has coordinated some of the most important instances of astronomy. She spent most of her career at the CEA, which she joined in 1974 and where she was the head of the Astrophysics Service, before becoming head of the Direction des Sciences de la Matière, then High Commissionner for Atomic Energy. She was a prominent Director General of ESO, opening the VLT to science operation, starting the construction of the ALMA array and launching the detailed studies of the ELT. Catherine has devoted much of her time to the astronomical community as editor-in-chief of the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, President of the International Astronomical Union, Chair of the CNES program committee, chair of the Board of Directors of the SKA Organization, and now as the Chairperson of the intergovernmental SKA Observatory organization. She has also served as vice-president of the CERN Council.
She was awarded the 2020 Tate Award for International Leadership in Physics by the American Institute of Physics “for her leadership in bringing to fruition some of the most important international astronomical observatories”. Catherine is a member of the Academia Europaea, the Academy of Sciences of the Institut de France and the International Academy of Astronautics. She is a foreign associate of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, a foreign member of the Royal Society of London, and a corresponding member of the National Academy of Exact and Natural Sciences of Argentina.