Public Lecture
Galactic Archaeology: Charting the Story of Our Cosmic Home
Keith Hawkins
University of Texas Austin
Wed, Jul 19, 5:30–6:30pm
Our Universe is made up of many billions of galaxies, yet we are still trying to figure out how they form, evolve, and assemble themselves. This question of galaxy formation and assembly is among the most fundamental in modern astronomy yet the answer still eludes us to this day. The Milky Way is an optimal laboratory for answering the questions of galaxy formation and assembly because it is one of the only systems to date where we can obtain detailed and precise data on the positions, motions, and chemical composition for billions of individual stars. Using our Galaxy as a sandbox for exploring galaxy formation and assembly is the essence of Galactic archaeology. In this talk, we will go on a journey through our Galaxy and learn how we can use state-of-the-art data large scale missions to chart the Milky Way’s structure and assembly over the last 10 billion years.
About Keith Hawkins
Dr. Keith Hawkins is an Assistant Professor of Astronomy at The University of Texas at Austin. He received his B.S. in astrophysics with minors in Mathematics and African Studies from the Honors Tutorial College at Ohio University as a Templeton and Goldwater Scholar in 2013. Dr. Hawkins completed several research internships around the world and taught middle school mathematics in the West African nation of Ghana during his undergraduate degree. After undergrad, Dr. Hawkins completed a 2.5 year Ph.D. in Astronomy at the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge in the UK as a British Marshall Scholar. In 2016-2018 he was a Simons Junior Research Fellow in the Society of Fellows at Columbia University in New York City. In 2018, he joined the faculty at UT Austin and has just received a promotion with tenure. His research interests are in Galactic archaeology, with the goal of revealing the formation and evolution of our Galaxy through detailed chemical and dynamical studies of individual stars.
Dr. Keith Hawkins is an Assistant Professor of Astronomy at The University of Texas at Austin. He received his B.S. in astrophysics from the Honors Tutorial College at Ohio University as a Templeton and Goldwater Scholar in 2013. After undergrad, Dr. Hawkins completed a 2.5 year Ph.D. in Astronomy at the University of Cambridge as a British Marshall Scholar. In 2016-2018 he was a Simons Junior Research Fellow in the Society of Fellows at Columbia University. In 2018, he joined the faculty at UT Austin and has just received a promotion with tenure.
Heinz R. Pagels Public Lecture Series
Heinz R Pagels was a professor of physics at Rockefeller University, president of the New York Academy of Science, a trustee of the Aspen Institute, and a member of the Aspen Center for Physics for twenty years, serving as a participant, officer, and trustee. He was also President of the International League for Human Rights. His work on chaos theory inspired the character of Ian Malcolm in the Jurassic Park book and movies. A part-time local resident, Professor Pagels died here in a mountaineering accident in 1988. His family and friends instituted the lecture series in his honor because he devoted a substantial part of his life to effective public dissemination of scientific knowledge.
