The Royal Astronomical Society would like to express its deepest sympathy to the family, friends and colleagues of cosmologist Professor Nicholas (Nick) Kaiser, who has died at the age of 68.
Kaiser began his study of astronomy at the University of Leeds, before completing his doctorate at the University of Cambridge. After academic positions in California and at the University of Sussex, he moved to a professorship at the University of Toronto and then the University of Hawaii. In parallel he held a professorship at Ecole Normale Superiere in Paris.
Over the course of his career, Kaiser made major contributions to cosmology, including in the cosmic microwave background, dark matter, gravitational lensing, and galaxy clusters. He was the Principal Investigator of the PANStarrs imaging survey.
Kaiser was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2008, and his many other honours include winning the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 2017.
RAS President Professor Mike Edmunds said: “I heard of the death of Nick Kaiser with great sadness - he was far too young and energetic to leave us. We will particularly miss his originality and his ability to make progress by looking at problems from a new point of view.”