Jean Brodie

Professor, Astronomy & Astrophysics

My research uses extragalactic globular clusters to study galaxy formation. The red sub-population (old and metal rich) of globular clusters traces the build up of bulges and the blue sub-popultion (old and metal poor) traces dark matter halos at early times. We use Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based wide field imaging data (e.g., from Subaru) to find the globular clusters in external galaxies and study their spatial distributions, and we follow up with moderate and high resolution spectroscopy at Keck and elsewhere to determine clusters ages, chemical element abundances and dynamics with which to compare to stellar evolutionary models, galaxy formation scenarios and cosmological simulations.

Academic Bio
PhD 1981 University of Cambridge, Institute of Astronomy and Emmanuel College
1980-1982 Harkness Post-doctoral Fellow, UC Berkeley
1982-1984 Chambers Research Fellow, Girton College Cambridge; SERC Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge
1984-1987 Assistant Research Astronomer, UC Berkeley
1987- 1991 Assistant Professor/Astronomer UCSC
1991-1996 Associate Professor/Astronomer UCSC
1997- Professor/Astronomer UCSC

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