Professor Philip Best has been Head of the School of Physics and Astronomy since August 2024, and we wanted to get to know him, his role, and his research a little better.
By Ainslie Roensdorf
A lifelong fascination with the night sky
Philip’s fascination with the night sky began at a young age, sparked by stargazing opportunities with his grandfather: “he took me out to see Halley’s comet when it was just a smudge in the sky.”
At school in Bolton, Greater Manchester, Philip developed an equal interest in biology, chemistry, and physics, which left him undecided about which path to pursue. Thus, a Natural Sciences degree at Cambridge was perfect for him; he was able to dip his toes into different disciplines as he progressed through his degree, taking astronomy options courses. Philip fondly describes the “bubbling enthusiasm” of Malcolm Longair, then Jacksonian Professor of Natural Philosophy, who inspired him to take astronomy further, and eventually complete a PhD under his supervision.
“Why do the galaxies we see…have the shapes and the sizes they do?”
The essence of Philip’s research is in uncovering “how galaxies form and evolve across the universe, and in particular the roles of active galactic nuclei: supermassive black holes at the centres of our galaxies, up to a billion times the mass of our sun.”
Radio observations tend to be ideally suited to this kind of research, and Philip talked us through the telescopes used for this. Traditional telescopes use larger dishes, like the Very Large Array, VLA, in New Mexico, “the one you see in films like Contact, with Jodie Foster listening on the headphones.” Philip himself has been heavily involved in LOFAR, the Low-Frequency Array, a large array centred in the Netherlands with antenna stations around Europe. More modern telescopes such as LOFAR represent a new generation of “software driven telescopes.” In this case data from 20,000 antennas over a diameter of 1000 km are combined to give a telescope with an effective total collecting area of 300,000 square meters, and a resolution (image quality) nearly as good as the Hubble Space Telescope. This allows very faint radio sources to be detected and studied in detail.
Philip acknowledges that research can sometimes go slowly, and a motivation for seeking the Head of School role was the diverse set of challenges it would bring, complementing his teaching and research.
From researcher to leader
In his previous role, Philip served on the School Executive Committee, the top-level decision-making body at the School, alongside the Head of School, the Director of Professional Services, and the other Heads of Institute. As Philip puts it, this familiarity with the upper-level workings of the school enabled him to “hit the ground running” in his new role as Head of School. Philip now faces a host of challenges and opportunities, chief among them the School’s rapid growth in recent years, with the annual undergraduate intake increasing from 150 to 250. Despite its growth, the School maintains a “welcome, positive environment,” something Philip is determined to preserve. One of his top priorities is to consolidate the school’s expansion in a way that retains its sense of community. “It’s important to make sure you don’t become too big that you lose the contact and the interactions,” he emphasizes.
Counting more than 500 staff and PhD students, as well as 1000 undergraduates, Philip compares the School’s scale to that of a business, noting that the administrative side of his role has many parallels such as managing staffing levels and costs. Day to day, he acts as a key intermediary between the University’s senior leadership, and the School, facilitating communication in both directions. This involves explaining how policy changes will impact students and staff, as well as implementing those policies effectively at the School level.
Philip’s extensive experience as Director of Assessment, Senior Director of Studies, and a long-time personal tutor (now academic advisor) has given him valuable insight into the student perspective, and a deep appreciation for the pressures the Teaching Office faces.
Looking ahead
While he acknowledges that “the University as a whole has historically not been one of the strongest in the national student survey,” his outlook is positive. He hopes to improve the student experience (in collaboration with Kristel Torokoff, Director of Teaching, and Jamie Cole, Director of Students, for example) through the organization of cohort events and the facilitation of smoother transitions between academic years.
Recognizing that the School has relatively small numbers of MSc students compared to other Schools, Philip sees this as an area for growth. Reviewing and improving MSc course offerings is a key priority in his efforts to better serve postgraduate students.
On the research front, the School is in a “very strong position,” and Philip is eager to “strengthen interdisciplinary research”. He observes that “people have been siloed into different topics for many years,” but believes that encouraging collaboration across disciplines will yield significant advantages. For instance, he envisions the establishment of a new centre for biomedical physics as a way to link current physics research to the healthcare sector.
Another priority for Philip is enhancing the school’s impact and interaction with industry, however he acknowledges a longstanding challenge: “Physics has this problem,” he explains, quoting Jim Dunlop, previous Head of School, “the trouble with physics is that anytime anything becomes applied, it stops becoming physics…it moves into engineering… it gets adopted and taken somewhere else.”
Alongside the Head of School role, Philip continues with research and teaching. When asked about how he manages his time, Philip says research “comes in lumps and bumps,” with helping PhD students to finish papers and apply for telescope time. In contrast, teaching follows a more structured schedule, so he’s not usually juggling all three priorities at once: “The prime job is being Head of School, so everything else has to fit around that.”
Munros and marathons
When not in JCMB, Philip can be found outside, running marathons, or “walking up a mountain in the middle of nowhere.” While he hasn’t bagged every Munro yet, he’s keeping track and is hoping to finish them all when he retires.
Having lived in Edinburgh for the past 24 years, Philip is rather fond of the city. “It’s got all the amenities of a capital city while being small enough that you can walk across it,” he says.
As we close our interview, he jokingly laments the city’s latitude “if only we could take all of that and move it 10 degrees further south,” but he urges us to not take for granted the beautiful city right on our doorstep.
