Winner. Scientist of the Year 2021

Françoise Combes

Academic title, degree: Academician, Professor, Ph.D.
Fields of science: Astrophysics
Research interest: Dark matter, galaxy evolution, galaxy formation, interstellar medium, star formation
Institution: College de France
Position: Chair of Galaxies and Cosmology
Country: France

Françoise Combes is a French astrophysicist at the Paris Observatory and a Professor, holder of the Galaxies and Cosmology Chair at the Collège de France since 2014. She is a member of the French Académie des sciences in the Sciences of the Universe section.

Françoise Combes was born in the summer of 1952 in Montpellier. She studied in various schools and colleges around the world, including Nouméa, New Caledonia. After two years of preparatory classes in Montpellier, she went to Paris to further her studies at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Rue d'Ulm. She obtained a DEA in Physics at the ENS (DEA "Brossel"), a 3rd cycle thesis on symmetrical matter/antimatter Universe models at the Paris-Meudon Observatory, and the aggregation of physics in 1975.

In 1975, Françoise Combes began a career as a teacher-researcher at the ENS (lecturer) and passed a state thesis in 1980 on the Dynamics and Structure of Galaxies. She is now an astronomer at the Paris Observatory and a member of the Academy of Sciences.

Her research activities are devoted to the formation and evolution of galaxies in a cosmological context. This first includes the dynamics of galaxies, their spiral or barred structure, and the interactions between galaxies, studied both by observations at various wavelengths and by numerical simulations. And also, the study of the interstellar medium of galaxies, particularly the molecular gas that gives birth to stars, whether in galaxies very close to us like Andromeda, or galaxies at the edge of the Universe, 13 billion years.

Most of her job is to do research and teaching. Prof. Françoise Combes taught a lot during her career, in all areas of physics, quantum mechanics, hydrodynamics, optics, and thermodynamics, and in her early years, she helped students prepare for the physics aggregation competition. Today, she devotes herself to teaching astrophysics: formation and dynamics of galaxies, cosmology, and dark matter.

If we want to understand the dynamics and formation of galaxies, we need to understand more closely what dark matter is in the Universe. Professor Combes is interested in several different models of dark matter, but also in one of the alternatives, which is modified gravity. She has also developed a model to account for the still unknown baryonic dark matter in the form of cold molecular gas.

On the other hand, doing research also requires participation in management, evaluation, and foresight, and Professor Françoise Combes has been a member of or chaired many committees: the CNRS national galaxies program, the French and European foresight committee on future instruments, selection of observation programs on ESO telescopes, the Hubble Space Telescope, the ALMA antenna network... For the past ten years, she has been the European Journal Astronomy & Astrophysics editor.

Professor Françoise Combes, astrophysicist and specialist in galaxies' dynamics, has discovered many phenomena that help explain their formation and evolution.

Her outstanding contribution to astrophysics ranges from discovering molecules in interstellar space to supercomputer simulations of galaxy formation. Her work has been crucial to understanding the formation of stars and the evolution of galaxies, including the role of supermassive black holes in galactic centers.

Professor Combes is the author of over a thousand articles, and a number of books, and has participated in collective works. Her English-language books include:
• The Milky Way (with James Lequeux), EDP Sciences, 2016, 196p (ISBN 978-2759819157)
• Galaxies and Cosmology (Astronomy and Astrophysics Library) (with Patrick Boissé) (translator: M. Seymour), Springer, 2nd Ed 2004, 468p (ISBN 978-3540419273)

• The Cold Universe Saas-Fee Advanced Course. vol 32. Swiss Society for Astrophysics and Astronomy (with Andrew W. Blain) (editor: Daniel Pfenniger), Springer, 2004, (ISBN 978-3540408383)
• Mysteries of Galaxy Formation, Praxis, 2010, 224p (ISBN 978-1441908674)
• La Voie Lactée, 2013, (EdP-Sciences), F. Combes & J. Lequeux

Her scientific activity has been honored with many national and international awards, among them the L'Oréal-UNESCO prize “For Women in Science” (2021) and the Gold Medal of the French National Centre for Scientific Research CNRS (2020). Professor Françoise Combes is a Commander of the National Order of Merit (2019), Officer of the French Legion of Honour (2015), Officer of the National Order of Merit (2009), Fellow of the American Astronomical Society, Honorary Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, Member of the Academia Europaea, and so on. In 2017, the school City of Success of Montpellier (France) was renamed as High school Françoise Combes.