Matt Taylor (scientist)

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Matt Taylor
Matt Taylor ESA Rosetta.jpg
Born Matthew Graham George Thaddeus Taylor
1973 (age 50–51)
Manor Park, London
Nationality British
Institutions European Space Agency
Alma mater <templatestyles src="Plainlist/styles.css"/>
Thesis MHD modelling of space plasmas

Matthew Graham George Thaddeus "Matt" Taylor (born 1973[1]) is a British astrophysicist employed by the European Space Agency. He is best known to the public for his involvement in the landing on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko by the Rosetta mission (European Space Agency)'s Philae lander, which was the first spacecraft to land on a comet nucleus. He is Project Scientist of the Rosetta mission.[1][2]

Education and early life

Taylor was born in Manor Park, London.[3] He is the son of a bricklayer and worked alongside his father, on building sites, during his summer breaks from university.[4]

He received a degree in physics from the University of Liverpool, as well as a Ph.D[5] in space physics which focused on Magnetohydrodynamics modeling of astrophysical plasma in the magnetosphere from Imperial College London.[4][6]

Career and research

After completing his PhD, Taylor joined the Mullard Space Science Laboratory as a Cluster research fellow.[7] This position led to his appointment as Cluster project scientist in 2005.[6][8] He is an author on 70 publications, primarily on the topic of aurorae.[6] In summer 2013, Taylor won the position of project scientist for the Rosetta mission.[2][4] Taylor's research has been published in leading peer reviewed scientific journals including Nature,[9] the Journal of Geophysical Research,[10] Geophysical Research Letters[11] and the Annales Geophyisicae.[12]

Shirt controversy

While giving a televised status update on the Rosetta space craft, Taylor wore a shirt depicting scantily-clad cartoon women with firearms made by his friend Elly Prizeman.[13][14][15] Taylor's decision to wear the shirt to a press conference drew criticism from a number of commentators,[16][17] who saw a reflection of a culture where women are unwelcome in scientific fields.[15] Others, including Boris Johnson,[18] Julie Bindel[19] and Tim Stanley,[20] made arguments against this criticism. Taylor later made a visibly emotional public apology, saying: "The shirt I wore this week – I made a big mistake, and I offended many people. And I'm very sorry about this".[21][22][23] Some writers expressed appreciation for Taylor's apology.[22][24] A campaign was set up on the crowdfund website Indiegogo,[25] with the objective of raising $3,000 to buy Taylor a gift, as a token of the public's appreciation for the work that he and the team had done.[26] The campaign raised a total of $24,003, of which $23,000 was donated to UNAWE at Taylor's request, the remainder going towards a plaque commemorating the mission.[25][27]

Personal life

Taylor and his wife Leanne have two children.[1][4] He has a tattoo of the Rosetta spacecraft and its lander Philae on his leg,[28] which he had tattooed after the spacecraft was successfully awoken from hibernation in 2014.[4] Additionally, Taylor is a devoted fan of heavy metal; in particular death metal, and posed with David Vincent of Morbid Angel for the magazine Metal Hammer, as well as having been photographed wearing Cannibal Corpse shirts multiple times.[29]

References

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  2. 2.0 2.1 Matt Taylor's publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database, a service provided by Elsevier.
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External links