David Elbaz

David Elbaz's grandparents moved to France from Morocco in the beginning of the 20th century. He was born and raised in the Paris métro area. Despite the fact that his early high school years were rather difficult (he had to repeat twice a school year[1]) in the end he did very well academically and he was admitted in the well known École Nationale Supérieure de Physique (ENSPG) in Grenoble, obtaining his undergraduate degree as an Engineer in 1990. He continued and completed his PhD in Astrophysics in 1994 at the Université Joseph Fourier, also in Grenoble, with a thesis entitled "Origine du fer dans le milieu intra-amas et distribution du gaz X dans les amas de galaxies".[2] His supervisors were James Lequeux et Monique Arnaud.[3] In 2005 he was also awarded his habilitation from the University of Paris XI.

In addition to 14 postdoctoral researchers, Elbaz has supervised 7 PhD students two of which received awards for their dissertations (H. Aussel 1999[4] and C. Schreiber 2015[5]). Since 2005 he has been also been teaching the "Galaxy Evolution"[6] course in the Master program "Recherche Astronomie, Astrophysique et Ingénierie Spatiale de Paris".[7]

Elbaz has made widely appreciated contributions to a number of areas in observational extragalactic astrophysics using mostly space infrared and submillimeter observations, as is evident by his Google Scholar record[8] and the fact that he has been repeatedly recognized as ISI Highly Cited researcher[9] by Clarivate Analytics. In 2001, relying on new data from the Infrared Space Observatory together with Ranga Chary produced a suite of galaxy spectral energy distribution templates which along with the current knowledge of the galaxy redshift distribution were able to interpret the cosmic infrared background as being produced to at least 70% level from dust enshrouded star formation in luminous infrared galaxies, (which has received ~1300 citations[10]). The advent of the Spitzer Space Telescope in 2003 enabled extremely deep observations in mid-infrared. Elbaz and his collaborations analysing observations from the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey, demonstrated that the star formation rate of individual galaxies increases due to environmental effects up to a critical galaxy density at redshift one, above which it decreases again, suggesting that galaxy evolution is not independent from structure formation at larger scales in the universe (which has received ~1400 citations[11]). Five years later, using deep far infrared observations from the Herschel Space Observatory, he led a study which revealed that most galaxies across cosmic time form stars in two main modes: one placing them in the so called "main sequence", where their star formation rate correlates tightly with their stellar mass, and one where the galaxies are more compact and form stars more efficiently departing from this correlation (which has received ~1100 citations[12]). More recently, using observations from ALMA his group discovered[13] a dominant population of optically invisible massive galaxies in the early Universe, which also attracted substantial attention from the scientific community.[14]

• Chrétien Award[15] of the American Astronomical Society (2000)
• Prix Jaffé from the Foundation of the Institut de France (2017)
• Member[16] of the Academia Europaea (2019)

Elbaz has been contributing in a number of leadership and service positions for the international astrophysics community, including:

• Managing Editor of Astronomy & Astrophysics Journal, 2018 - present
• Member of the ESA SPICA Science Team, 2018-present[17]
• Member of the Euclid France steering committee, 2013-present
• Member of the ESA Astronomy Working Group,[18] 2015-2018
• President of the International Space Advisory Board for the SPICA satellite for JAXA, 2015-2016

Elbaz is very active in public outreach activities which have been extremely popular and has been interviewed regularly on various topics of modern astrophysics from most major media in France, including "Le Monde",[19] "France Culture",[20] "Sciences et Avenir",[21] "France Inter",[22] etc. Among those his presentations "Is the Universe an illusion?" (in french "L’Univers est-il une illusion"[1]) and "Do we live in a black hole?" (in french "Habiton-nous dans un trou noire"[23]) have been viewed over 1.1million times and nearly 500,000 times respectively while the most recent on "In search of the killer of galaxies" (in french "A la recherche du tueur de galaxies"[24]) which was presented at the Conférence Cyclope in February 2020 has already surpassed 90,000 views.

Elbaz has also been writing the scenario and participating in shows which involve science and art. In particular over the past decade he has designed three shows:

• "La tête dans les étoiles"[25] (with the neurobiologist Alain Destexhe[26] and the magician Marc Feld[27])
• "Magicosmologie"[28] (with Marc Feld[27])
• "Jonglerie Astrale"[29] (with the juggler Vincent de Lavenère[30])

which haven been presented in various theatres in France.[31][32][33]

Several of the public outreach presentations of Dr. Elbaz are freely available in his YouTube channel.[34]

Elbaz has published extensively in various areas of extragalactic observational astrophysics. According to Google Scholar his nearly 300 scientific refereed papers have received over 40,000 citations, with a corresponding h-index of more than 100.[8] He has also been recognised for several years, more recently in 2019,[9] as an ISI Highly Cited researcher by Clarivate Analytics.

Elbaz has also authored three books. One in popularising science:

• "A la recherche de l'univers invisible, matière noire, énergie sombre, trous noirs",[35] 2016, éditions Odile Jacob

which also received in 2017 the "Prix Sciences et Philosophie",[36] as well as two novels

• "Le vase de Pépi",[37] 2007, éditions Odile Jacob.
• "...et Alice Tao se souvint du futur",[38] 2010, éditions Odile Jacob.