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Fred Taylor (physicist)

Fredric William Taylor (born 24 September 1944) is an atmospheric physicist, planetary scientist and author. He is Halley Professor of Physics Emeritus at Oxford University, a Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford and a member of the Oxford Physics Department, where he was head of Atmospheric, Oceanic & Planetary Physics for 21 years. His recently-published Memoir (‘Exploring the Planets, Oxford University Press, 2016) describes him as ‘a Northumbrian, a Liverpudlian, a Californian, and an Oxford Don with half a century of experience of devising and deploying experiments to study the Earth and the planets, moons and small bodies of the Solar System.’

Early life and career

Fred Taylor was born in Amble, Northumberland, England, to William Taylor of Amble and Ena Lloyd Burns of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He attended the village school in Howick, Northumberland where his mother was headmistress, and then the Duke of Northumberland's School, Alnwick. Higher education followed at the University of Liverpool (B. Sc. With First Class honours in Physics in 1966), and Oxford University (D. Phil. In Atmospheric Physics in 1970). After graduating he spent ten years in the USA, in the Space Science Division of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena. While there he was Principal Investigator on an experiment which flew on the Pioneer Venus Orbiter in 1979, making the first systematic study of the meteorology of the atmosphere of Venus, and became involved in the Galileo mission to Jupiter. He returned to England in 1980 to take over the headship of his former department at Oxford, and went on to participate in a number of planetary and Earth Observation space experiments. Several of these are ongoing, including Cassini-Huygens, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Venus Express. He and his colleagues at Oxford and overseas also do theoretical work and modelling on problems in atmospheric and oceanic physics, such as ozone depletion, the greenhouse effect and climate change.

Books and Publications

Taylor has published more than 300 scientific papers in learned journals, most recently with colleagues on the investigator team for the Rosetta comet rendezvous mission, including ‘Exposed water ice on the nucleus of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko’, which appeared in the journal Nature in January 2016.

His publication list includes twelve books:

1. Briggs, G.A., and Taylor, F.W.. The Cambridge Photographic Atlas of the Planets, 256 pp., Cambridge University Press, 1982. German Edition, 1983. Second Edition (Revised), 1986. Italian Edition, 1988.

2. Houghton, J. T., Taylor, F.W., Rodgers, C.D. Remote Sounding of atmospheres. 343 pp, Cambridge University Press, 1984, republished 2009.

3. Coustenis, A., and Taylor, F.W. Titan, the Earthlike Moon. 330 pp. World Scientific Publishing, October 1999.

4. Taylor, F.W. The Cambridge Photographic Guide to the Planets. Cambridge University Press, November 2001.

5. Lopez-Puertas, M. and F.W. Taylor. Non-local thermodynamic equilibrium in atmospheres. World Scientific Publishing, January 2002.

6. Taylor, F.W. Elementary Climate Physics. Oxford University Press, July 2005.

7. Vardavas, I.M. and Taylor, F.W. Radiation and Climate, Oxford University Press, September 2007; second edition in paperback 2011.

8. Coustenis, A., and Taylor, F.W. Titan: Exploring an Earthlike World. 330 pp. World Scientific Publishing, July 2008.

9. Taylor, F.W. The Scientific Exploration of Mars, Cambridge University Press, December 2009.

10. Taylor F.W. Planetary Atmospheres. Oxford University Press, August 2010.

11. Taylor, F.W. The Scientific Exploration of Venus, Cambridge University Press, August 2014.

12. Taylor, F.W. Exploring the Planets: A Memoir. Oxford University Press, February 2016.

Web sites

http://www.jesus.ox.ac.uk/fellows-and-staff/fellows/professor-fred-taylor

http://www2.physics.ox.ac.uk/contacts/people/taylorf

http://www.amazon.co.uk/F.-W.-Taylor/e/B001IZ1IVG/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0