23 Facts About Martin Rees

Martin John Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow was born on 23 June 1942 and is a British cosmologist and astrophysicist.

Martin Rees is the fifteenth Astronomer Royal, appointed in 1995, and was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, from 2004 to 2012 and President of the Royal Society between 2005 and 2010.

Martin Rees was educated at Bedstone College, then from the age of 13 at Shrewsbury School.

Martin Rees studied for the mathematical tripos at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating with first class honours.

Martin Rees then undertook post-graduate research at Cambridge and completed a PhD supervised by Dennis Sciama in 1967.

Martin Rees later moved to Cambridge, where he was the Plumian Professor at the University of Cambridge until 1991, and the director of the Institute of Astronomy.

Martin Rees was professor of astronomy at Gresham College, London, in 1975 and became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1979.

Martin Rees is an Honorary Fellow of Darwin College, King's College, Clare Hall, Robinson College and Jesus College, Cambridge.

Martin Rees is the author of more than 500 research papers, and he has made contributions to the origin of cosmic microwave background radiation, as well as to galaxy clustering and formation.

Martin Rees was one of the first to propose that enormous black holes power quasars, and that superluminal astronomical observations can be explained as an optical illusion caused by an object moving partly in the direction of the observer.

Since the 1990s, Martin Rees has worked on gamma-ray bursts, especially in collaboration with Peter Meszaros, and on how the "cosmic dark ages" ended when the first stars formed.

Martin Rees is an author of books on astronomy and science intended for the lay public and gives many public lectures and broadcasts.

Martin Rees is a member of the Board of the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton and the Oxford Martin School.

Martin Rees co-founded the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk and serves on the Scientific Advisory Board for the Future of Life Institute.

Martin Rees has formerly been a Trustee of the British Museum, the Science Museum, the Gates Cambridge Trust and the Institute for Public Policy Research.

Martin Rees has been president of the Royal Astronomical Society and the British Science Association, and was a Member of Council of the Royal Institution of Great Britain until 2010.

Martin Rees has received honorary degrees from a number of universities including Hull, Sussex, Uppsala, Toronto, Durham, Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale, Melbourne and Sydney.

Martin Rees belongs to several foreign academies, including the US National Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Science Academy of Turkey and the Japan Academy.

Martin Rees became president of the Royal Society on 1 December 2005 and continued until the end of the Society's 350th Anniversary Celebrations in 2010.

In 2005, Martin Rees was elevated to a life peerage, sitting as a crossbencher in the House of Lords as Baron Martin Rees of Ludlow, of Ludlow in the County of Shropshire.

In June 2022, to celebrate his 80th birthday, Martin Rees was the subject of the BBC programme The Sky at Night, in conversation with Professor Chris Lintott.

Martin Rees is an atheist but has criticised militant atheists for being too hostile to religion.

Martin Rees is a lifelong supporter of the Labour Party, but has no party affiliation when sitting in the House of Lords.