Ken Freeman

Ken Freeman is Duffield Professor of Astronomy at the Australian National University (Research School of Astronomy & Astrophysics, Mount Stromlo Observatory) in Canberra. He studied mathematics at the University of Western Australia and theoretical astrophysics at the University of Cambridge, followed by a postdoctoral year at McDonald Observatory (University of Texas) with G. de Vaucouleurs and a year as a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. He returned to Australia in 1967 and has been there ever since.

His research interests are in the formation and dynamics of galaxies and globular clusters, and particularly in the problem of dark matter in galaxies: he was one of the first to point out (1970) that spiral galaxies contain a large fraction of dark matter. Since then, he has written many papers on dark matter in spiral and elliptical galaxies. He was a founding member of the MACHO collaboration which used microlensing techniques to search for galactic dark matter in the form of compact stellar-mass objects.

For his current research, he uses the optical and radio telescopes in Australia, and also observes with the Hubble Space Telescope and large optical telescopes in Spain, Chile, and Hawaii. He has written about 500 research articles.

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