Professor Michel Mayor

MAYOR, MICHEL

michel.mayor@obs.unige.ch

Position : Astrophysician,
Full Professor, Department of Astronomy, University of Geneva, and Director of the Geneva Observatory, Sauverny, Switzerland.

Research interests : Over several years Professor Mayor has developed a spectrograph for measurements of velocities of stars along the line of sight. It is thanks to this instrument, and its successive improvements, that Mayor has attained the extraordinary precision of a few meters per second in these velocities. This has led to the first detection of a planet outside our solar system by Mayor and his postgraduate student Didier Queloz in the year 1995.

Current research topics :
Search for extra-solar planets and brown dwarfs
Radial velocity measurements at intermediate and high precisions (Coravel - Elodie - Coralie)
High resolution Spectroscopy
Radial-velocity standards
Low-mass companions
Luminosity and mass fonctions of the lower Main-Sequence
Binarity among cool stars (G, K and M dwarfs)
Stellar rotation
Galactic kinematics: F-G dwarfs of the solar neighbourhood
Outer disc Cepheids
Coravel - Hipparcos survey
T-Tauri stars
Giant barium and S stars

Awards :
1983 Prize of the Académie Française des Sciences (Prize "Charles-Louis de Saulces de Freycinet")

1997 Medal of the Commission of Bioastronomy of the International Astronomical Union

1998 Prize Marcel-Benoist awarded by the Swiss Confederation

1998 Janssen Prize by the Astronomical Society of France

1998 ADION Medal by the Observatory of the Côte d'Azur (Nice, France)

Balzan Prize 2000 for Instrumentation and Techniques in Astronomy and Astrophysics.

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Recent publications :
The CORALIE survey for southern extra-solar planets"
"VIII. The very low-mass companions of HD141937, HD162020, HD168443 and HD202206: brown dwarfs or superplanets?"
S. Udry, M. Mayor, D. Naef, F. Pepe, D. Queloz, N.C. Santos, M. Burnet
A&A 2002, in press

"The CORALIE survey for southern extra-solar planets VII. Two short period Saturnian companions to HD108147 and HD168746 "
F. Pepe, M. Mayor, F. Galland, D. Naef, F. Pepe, D. Queloz, N.C. Santos, S. Udry, M. Burnet
A&A 2002, in press

"Beryllium abundances in stars hosting giant planets"
N.C. Santos, R.J. Garcia Lopez, G. Israelian, M. Mayor, R. Rebolo, A. Garcia-Gil, M.R. Perez de Taoro, S. Randich,
A&A 2002, 386, 1028

"The CORALIE survey for southern extra-solar planets VI. New long-period giant planets around HD28185 and HD213240"
N.C. Santos, M. Mayor, D. Naef, F. Pepe, D. Queloz, S. Udry, M. Burnet
A&A 2001, 379, 999

"The distribution of exoplanet masses"
A. Jorissen, M. Mayor, S. Udry,
A&A 2001, 379, 992

"No planet for HD 166435"
D. Queloz, G. Henry, J.-P. Sivan, S. Baliunas, J.-L. Beuzit, R. Donahue, M. Mayor, D. Naef, C. Perrier, S. Udry
A&A 2001, 379, 279

"The diversity of extra-solar planets around solar-type stars"
S. Udry, M. Mayor,
Astrobiology. The Quest for the Conditions of Life
Springer, Heidelberg

"Extra-solar planets around solar-type stars"
S. Udry, M. Mayor,
in First European Workshop on Exo/Astrobiology, Frascati, May 2001, ESA SP 496.