Great researchers who have visited the IAC, at a click

Henri M. Boffin, during his talk "Binary stars as the key to understand planetary nebulae". Credit: IAC.      
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“IAC Talks” is celebrating 10 years of live broadcasting which have been gathered in an archive which you can now access via the YouTube channel of the Institute. During this decade important figures in the world of Astrophysics  have visited the centre, including Kip Thorne, Nobel Laureate in Physics, 2017, Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who discovered the pulsars in 1967, Didier Queloz, who together with Michel Mayor participated in the detection of the first extrasolar planet that orbit a star similar as Sun, Malcolm Longair, a President of the Royal Astronomical Society, Simon White and Carlos Frenk, winners of the Gruber Prize for Cosmology, and fathers of the LCDM model of structure formation in the universe, Sara Seager, a specialist in exoplanet atmospheres, Juan Ignacio Cirac, one of the pioneers in quantum computing, winner of the Principe de Asturias Prize in 2006, and the well-known astronomers Debra and Bruce Elmegreen, specialists in the structure and evolution of galaxies. Their talks can be found in this compendium, together with those by specialists in other fields of science, such as the biochemist Margarita Salas, and the expert in Climate Change, Sir John Houghton.

Almost all the meetings celebrated during this period were broadcast live to facilitate access by the international astronomical community. Until now the “IAC Talks” archive has grown to reach over a thousand lectures, thanks to the work of the Commission for Seminars, the personnel of the Common Informatics Services and the Multimedia Service of the IAC.

From April 29th 2008, when the talk by the Heidelberg Centre for Astronomy Hans-G. Ludwig on hydrodynamical modles of radiation along the Hertzsprung- Russell diagram was broadcast, there have been a great many researchers who have participated in these seminars and colloquia. To give numbers, there have been 591 regular seminars, 66 colloquia, normally given by well-known invited professors or investigators and 41 talks presenting high impact results, usually led by researchers from the IAC. In total there have been 15 series on specific themes, among several Winter Schools, courses, workshops, etc., which taken together reach over a thousand videos.

Other famous scientists, such as George Smoot, Nobel Laureate in Physics 2006, and Fred Hoyle, who participated in the development of the theory of stellar nucelosynthesis, have also visited the IAC. However as no direct broadcasts of their talks were made at the time, these could not be included in this archive.

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