Carlos Frenk

Carlos Silvestre Frenk (born 27 October 1951) is a Mexican-British cosmologist.

Frenk graduated from the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the University of Cambridge, and spent his early research career in the United States, before settling permanently in the United Kingdom.

Frenk studied engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico but later changed to Theoretical Physics, earning his undergraduate degree in 1976.

He gained the highest marks in his year, and so was awarded the Gabino Barreda Medal.

He visited Italy, where he attended a guest lecture by Martin Rees, then a Professor at the University of Cambridge.

Encouraged by Rees, Frenk abandoned his plan to study at Caltech and tried for Cambridge instead.

That year he secured a British Council Fellowship and enrolled at the University of Cambridge to read Part III of the Mathematical Tripos, which he completed in 1977.

He remained at Cambridge for doctoral studies under the supervision of Bernard J. T. Jones.

His doctoral research explored the properties of the Milky Way.

The idea of dark matter was still "extremely speculative" at this point, but Frenk concluded that the galaxy was surrounded with "embedded" dark matter.

He was awarded his PhD in astronomy in 1981.

At Cambridge, Frenk decided to shift his research focus to cosmology because he felt there was still plenty of "exciting problems" within this field left to be solved; he thought particle physics was "moving rather slowly" and, despite help from professors, could not identify a suitable fundamental physics project for doctoral research that engaged his interest.

He met future collaborator Simon White for the first time at Cambridge.

White, already a post-doc, acted as what Frenk later called his "unofficial supervisor".

Following Cambridge, Frenk worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California.

He was based in Berkeley from 1981 to 1983, having been invited here by Marc Davis, an astronomer who had recently left Harvard.

He was then based in Santa Barbara from 1983 to 1984.

He subsequently returned to the United Kingdom, where he was a postdoc at Sussex University from 1984 to 1985.

At Berkeley, Davis needed Frenk, with his background in theoretical physics, to assist in interpreting his research — he had mapped 2,200 galaxies while at Harvard.

Meanwhile, White had also moved to Berkeley.

This allowed the trio of Davis, White and Frenk to work together on what would prove to be a significant advance in astrophysics.

The trio intended to use computer modelling to investigate the early state of the universe.

At this time, computational astronomy was a very new discipline.

In need of assistance, they recruited George Efstathiou, a recent PhD from Durham University, to help them.

Having become a foursome, the group worked on a series of papers — they were particularly interested in the supersymmetric theory that dark matter particles were "cold".

One of their first conclusions was that dark matter could not be made of neutrinos.

In 1985, they published their most significant paper in The Astrophysical Journal, entitled The evolution of large-scale structure in a universe dominated by cold dark matter, which revealed the results of the first simulations of cold dark matter.

Once their research started to draw important results – despite the limited computing power available to them – Davis, White, Efstathiou, and Frenk came to be known as the 'Gang of Four' for the attention their arguments attracted.

The research produced by the Gang of Four confirmed the validity of the "cold dark matter theory" for the formation of galaxies and other cosmic structures.

While their arguments were not without their detractors, this would eventually become the accepted interpretation in cosmology.

He joined the Durham University Department of Physics in 1986 and since 2001 has served as the Ogden Professor of Fundamental Physics at Durham University.

Frenk is particularly notable for his work around galaxy formation, including his use of complex computer simulations to test theories on the origins and evolution of the universe, thus helping to resolve disputes among theoretical models.

Among the most prolific and frequently cited authors in astronomy and space science, Frenk has written more than 500 scientific articles; he is a co-author on 5 of the 100 most cited papers ever published within his field.

As a pioneer in computational astrophysics, Frenk, alongside Marc Davis, George Efstathiou, and Simon White, published a series of influential papers that established the validity of the cold dark matter hypothesis through computer modelling.

Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2004, Frenk has received numerous awards and is regularly tipped as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Carlos Frenk was born in Mexico City, Mexico and is the eldest son of six siblings.

His father is a German Jewish doctor who emigrated from Germany at the age of 7, fleeing persecution in the lead up to World War II.

His mother is a Mexican–Spanish pianist.

As a youth, Frenk showed some talent for basketball and played semi-professionally, but realised he would not be tall enough to turn pro.

The other half of his life was devoted to mathematics.