Simon Lilly

Simon Lilly
Simon Lilly in 2014, portrait via the Royal Society
Born	Simon J. Lilly
Fields	Galaxy formation and evolution Astronomy
Institutions	ETH Zürich Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics University of Toronto University of Hawaii Princeton University
Alma mater	University of Cambridge (BA) University of Edinburgh (PhD)
Thesis	Evolution of radio galaxies (1983)
Academic advisors	Malcolm Longair
Known for	Redshift surveys Cosmic Evolution Survey
Notable awards	FRS (2014) Herschel Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (2017)
Spouse	C. Marcella Carollo
Website www.astro.ethz.ch/lilly

Simon J. Lilly FRS is a Professor at in the Department of Physics at ETH Zürich.

Lilly was educated at the University of Cambridge where he was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in Natural Sciences (Physics and Theoretical Physics) in 1980. He went on to study at the University of Edinburgh where he was awarded a PhD in 1983 for research on the evolution of radio galaxies supervised by Malcolm Longair.

Following his PhD, Lilly was a SERC/NATO postdoctoral research Fellow at Princeton University from 1984 to 1985. He was appointed Assistant Professor and then Associate Professor at the University of Hawaii from 1985 to 1990, then Full Professor at the University of Toronto from 1990 to 2000. He served as Director General of the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics from 2000 to 2002 before being appointed Professor at ETH Zurich in 2002. He was Head of the Department of Physics at ETH (2015-2017).

Professor Lilly's research mostly focusses on galaxy formation and evolution.

Simon Lilly was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2014. His nomination reads: Simon Lilly is an outstanding observational astronomer who has led many important studies of how normal galaxies evolved over the past 10 billion years. His early work provided the first convincing measurement of the star formation history of the Universe. This landmark result was influential in providing support for theoretically motivated models of galaxy assembly. He has also pioneered ambitious surveys coupling Hubble Space Telescope imaging with ground-based spectroscopy. By connecting data from various epochs, his imaginative work has provided valuable new insights into how the various galaxy populations change with cosmic time.