Françoise Combes

Françoise Combes (born 12 August 1952) is a French astrophysicist at the Paris Observatory and a professor at the Collège de France where she has been the chair of Galaxies and cosmology since 2014.

Françoise Combes studied at the École Normale Supérieure from 1971 to 1975.

In 1975, she obtained the Agrégation and a PhD in Physics from Paris Diderot University, writing her thesis on the dynamics and structure of galaxies.

Her research works are about galaxy formation and evolution, in a cosmological context.

This work includes: galaxy dynamics, their spiral and barred structures, and interactions between galaxies, studied both through multi-wavelength observations and by numerical simulations.

Additionally, she has published extensively on the interstellar medium of galaxies.

In particular, the molecular gas which gives birth to new stars in nearby galaxies, such as Andromeda, and which can be found in high redshift systems.

She has published numerous reviews that range in her areas of interest.

Françoise Combes has contributed to various models of dark matter, and is also interested in alternative solutions, such as modified gravity.

She collaborated with Daniel Pfenniger in developing a model to account under the form of cold molecular gas for a large fraction of the dark baryons, which have not yet been identified.

Françoise Combes is the author of over a thousand articles, a number of books, and has participated in collective works.

Her English-language books include:

On 15 September 2017 the 'City of Success' school at Montpellier was renamed as 'High school Françoise Combes'.