MPA scientist Marat Gilfanov elected to the Academia Europaea
In June 2022, the Academia Europaea announced the election of its new members including MPA scientist Prof. Marat Gilfanov. Along with Rashid Sunyaev and Simon White, elected to Academia Europaea in 1990 and 2009, respectively, Gilfanov is the third MPA scientist honoured with an AE membership. A few weeks earlier Marat became a full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Marat Gilfanov completed his PhD in physics in 1989 (thesis advisor Rashid Sunyaev) and became a staff scientist at the high-energy astrophysics department of the Space Research Institute (IKI) in Moscow. In 1996, he obtained the doctor of sciences degree in Russia, which is equivalent to the German habilitation. That same year, 25 years ago, he joined the Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics, where currently he is a research group leader. He also holds a position of a Principal researcher at IKI. From 2014 to 2019 he was a visiting extraordinary professor of Amsterdam University.
Marat works at the interface of observational and theoretical astrophysics, focusing on a broad range of problems of high-energy astrophysics, extragalactic astronomy and cosmology. He made a number of widely-known contributions to the astrophysics of relativistic compact objects, the physics of accretion and boundary layers, X-ray scaling relations for star-forming galaxies, the nature of SN Ia progenitors, and fluctuations of the cosmic X-ray background. Presently, the main of focus of Marat’s research is the SRG/eROSITA X-ray all-sky survey; Marat is one of the creators of the X-ray all-sky map obtained by eROSITA in 2020. Using this data, he studies tidal disruption events, the growth of supermassive black holes, the large scale structure of the Universe, and cosmology.
Marat holds a title of professor of astrophysics, he is a full member of the Russian Academy of sciences, member of Academia Europaea, and member of the editorial board of the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. He was a recipient of the COSPAR (Committee of Space Research) Yakov Zeldovich medal for young scientists.