David Southwood
| David Southwood | |
|---|---|
Prof. David Southwood as President of the Royal Astronomical Society
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| Born |
30 June 1945 Torquay, Devon, UK |
| Nationality | British |
| Alma mater |
Queen Mary, University of London, Imperial College London |
| Known for |
Magnetospheres of planets and moons Director of Science at the European Space Agency President of the Royal Astronomical Society |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Space science, robotic spacecraft |
| Institutions |
University of California, Los Angeles, Imperial College London, European Space Agency, Royal Astronomical Society |
| Website | www3 |
Professor David John Southwood (born 30 June 1945) is a British space scientist who holds the post of Senior Research Investigator at Imperial College London. He was the President of the Royal Astronomical Society from 2012-2014, and earlier served as the Director of Science and Robotic Exploration at the European Space Agency (2001-2011). Southwood's research interests have been in solar–terrestrial physics and planetary science, particularly magnetospheres. He built the magnetic field instrument for the Cassini Saturn orbiter.
Southwood was born in Torquay, Devon, and attended Cockington County Primary School, then Torquay Boys' Grammar School. At school he specialized in languages. However, he studied mathematics for his first degree at Queen Mary College, London, graduating in 1966. He obtained a PhD in physics from Imperial College London with a thesis on the theory and data analysis of low-frequency waves in the Earth’s space environment.
His PhD work led to the first direct evidence for Kelvin-Helmholtz instability at the Earth’s magnetopause.
Southwood conducted post-doctoral research at the University of California, Los Angeles, working on magnetometer data from the ATS-1 spacecraft. He then returned to Imperial College in 1971, where he produced a theory of field-line resonances in the Earth’s magnetosphere which now underpins most work on geomagnetic pulsations.
In 1982 Southwood founded what became the Space and Atmospheric Physics Group and together with André Balogh decided to focus the group’s experimental work on space magnetometers. This led to Imperial’s involvement in a series of missions including Ulysses, Mars 96, Cluster, Cassini, Rosetta, BepiColombo, and Solar Orbiter. His magnetometer on the Cassini Saturn orbiter found the first signatures that led to the discovery of geysers on the moon Enceladus.
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