Ph.D. 2022, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen
MPhys (Hons) 2018, University of St Andrews

John R. Weaver studies the formation and evolution of galaxies across cosmic history, working at the intersection of astronomy, cosmology, and statistics. In particular, he is interested in the puzzling origins of the most massive galaxies and their relation to the cosmic web of dark matter. In addition to his community-supporting work cataloging millions of galaxies, he is the Principal Investigator of one of the deepest JWST spectroscopic surveys of early massive galaxies. As a Brinson Prize Fellow, his work will focus on ESA’s Euclid Mission, a new wide-field near-infrared telescope that is surveying vast regions of our Universe. He will use Euclid to identify unprecedented numbers of massive galaxies in the first billion years after the Big Bang, placing fundamentally new constraints on cosmological models. Unsatisfied with purely statistical insights, he will also use spectroscopy to explore the astrophysical mechanisms that drove the formation of these remarkable cosmic beasts.