Douglas Lin is a distinguished professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, USA. He has been the chair of the astronomy department at University of California, Santa Cruz, USA (1997-1998) and the founding director of the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Peking University in China (2007-2011). He has been honored as the Rothschild professor at the Isaac Newton Institute, Cambridge, UK; Peter Wall International Distinguished Professor at the University of British Columbia, Canada; the Carnegie Centennial Professor at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Tsinghua University in China.

Career and awards

Lin obtained his undergraduate degree from McGill University in Canada (1971) and his PhD from Cambridge University (1976). He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard University (1976-1978) and Trinity Hall, Cambridge (1976-1979). His many awards include the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (USA), the Otto Schmidt Medal of the Soviet Academy of Sciences; he is an Alexander von Humbolt Fellow (Germany) a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society (UK); he received the Brouwer Award of the American Astronomical Society and the Catherine Wolfe Bruce Gold Medal of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.

Research interests

Professor Lin has broad research interests in many aspects of theoretical astrophysics. He has made contributions in the areas of planet formation, structure, and evolution; solar system dynamics; star formation and interstellar medium; astrophysical hydrodynamics and stellar dynamics; the theory of accretion disks; interacting binary stars; the formation and dynamical evolution of stellar clusters; interacting galaxies; active galactic nuclei and black holes; the intergalactic medium and gravitational waves.

He is known for his pioneering work on the origin of ‘hot Jupiters’, population synthesis of exoplanets, dwarf novae outbursts, dark matter in dwarf galaxies, and proper motion of the Magellanic Clouds. He has published 250 papers in refereed journals with over 22,000 citations and an H-index of 80. His research interests overlap with those of many colleagues at the Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy at the University of Amsterdam. He intends to interact and carry out collaborative research projects with several professors, postdocs, and students in several groups at API.