About David Malin
David Malin worked for 26 years at the Anglo-Australian Observatory as photographic scientist and astronomer.
There David Malin developed hypersensitising processes which can give enormous gains in speed to the photographic materials that were used in astronomy. He also invented new ways of revealing information on astronomical plates, a speciality which has given him an international reputation.
These novel image enhancement techniques quickly led to the discovery of two new types of galaxy. Malin-Carter 'shell' galaxies have low contrast but large-scale features associated with otherwise normal galaxies, while in 1987 he discovered an extremely faint, uniquely massive 'proto-galaxy' which has since been named Malin-1. These are some of the faintest objects ever detected by an ground-based telescope and are the result of a photographic process that has been dubbed 'Malinisation'. Their discovery represented a significant advance in photographic astronomy, as well as being a major contribution to research on galaxies.
The several photographic techniques developed for research work come together in a method for making true-colour astronomical photographs from black and white plates taken in three separate colours. They have been widely published on the covers of hundreds books and magazines, including LIFE and National Geographic and as a series of Australian postage stamps.They have also appeared in international solo art exhibitions in Australia, Britain, China, France, Italy, India and the USA. David Malin has also used CCDs for colour imagery on the AAT, but so far none of these images has made it into an art gallery.
David Malin has published over 120 scientific papers and a similar number of popular articles on astronomy and photography, as well as seven books. He is also a well-known and entertaining lecturer on these and related topics. A recent book The Invisible Universe (Bulfinch Press/Little, Brown and Company, 1999) is a large format celebration of the beauty of the night sky, a subject increasing explored in his gallery exhibitions. He was also scientific advisor for Heaven and Earth (Phaidon, 2002) a profusely illustrated work that uses scientific pictures to explore all scales from the atomic to the cosmic.
David Malin's contributions to photographic science and astronomy have received international recognition, including honorary degrees from two Australian Universities:
Elected Fellow of The Royal Photographic Society, 1983.
Henri Chretien Award of the American Astronomical Society, 1985.
Jackson-Gwilt Medal and Prize of the Royal Astronomical Society, 1985.
Doctor of Science (Honoris Causa) from the University of Sydney, 1989.
Rodman Medal of the Royal Photographic Society, 1990.
Honorarary Fellow of the Australian Institute of Photography, 1993.
Progress Medal of the Photographic Society of America, 1993.
Commonwealth Medal of the Australian Photographic Society, 1993.
University of NSW Press/Eureka Science Book Prize), 1994.
Appointed Adjunct Professor of Scientific Photography at RMIT, 1996.
Elected Fellow of the International Academy of Astronautics, 1998.
Awarded Lennart Nilsson Prize, 2000
Doctor of Science from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, 2003.
David Malin's name is associated with "Malinization", a process for revealing very faint features of photographic images. It was used to discover Malin-1, one of the most massive (and least conspicuous) galaxies known and Malin-Carter shell galaxies, distinctive elliptical galaxies that have low contrast, arc-like structures. Malin spikes and bullets in the extreme star eta Carinae. The minor planet (4766) Malin. (1987 FF1 was discovered on Malin's birthday, March 28, by Eleanor Helin at Palomar). |
|
|
