Carole Jordan

Education

Carole Jordan was educated at Harrow County Grammar School for Girls and at University College London (BSc 1962; PhD 1965). Her first paper, written while she was still an undergraduate, was on the distortion of lunar craters.

Her PhD studies under C. W. Allen included identification of iron and other lines in the solar spectrum and the ZETA experiment, early ionisation-balance calculations, development of density-diagnostic methods using the iron lines, calculation of relative element abundances and modelling from emission-measure distributions.

Her first paper on coronal research, "The Relative Abundance of Silicon Iron and Nickel in the Solar Corona" was published in 1965.

Scientific work

Jordan developed new insights by developing new techniques to use the ionisation balance of elements, the mechanisms of level population in ions, and combining this with observational results from the Sun and stars. As a result of her work on the Skylab ultraviolet spectra the understanding of He-like ions was further developed. This had implications for the development of applications, like X-ray lasers. The electron density diagnostics, and temperature density diagnostics, when combined with the emission measure analysis developed by her yielded new insights in the chromospheres of cool stars, T Tauri Stars, and the Sun, to name a few. Following the launch of the International Ultraviolet Explorer satellite in 1978, she turned her attention to stellar coronal and chromospheric activity. Her knowledge of solar activity enabled her to help develop this new branch of astrophysics. Since about 1980, she has been a key member of nearly every team, in the UK, Europe and the US, concerned with the development and use of instruments for the studies of ultra-violet and x-ray spectra of the Sun and of the stars.

Career

Research associate, Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics, University of Colorado, Boulder, 1966

Assistant Lecturer, Department of Astronomy, UCL, attached to the Spectroscopy Division of UKAEA Culham Laboratory, 1966–69

During this time, she completed her ionisation-balance calculations and the identification of some forbidden lines and satellite lines. In 1969, she started to devise methods to obtain the structure of the solar transition region.

Astrophysics Research Unit, Culham Laboratory:

Post-doctoral research assistant, 1969–71

Senior Scientific Officer, 1971–73

Principal Scientific Officer, 1973–76

Wolfson Tutorial Fellow in Natural Science, Somerville College, Oxford, 1976 -

University of Oxford: reader in physics, 1994–96, professor of physics 1996-, head of the Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics, 2003–2008

She has published papers on astrophysical plasma spectroscopy and structure and energy balance in cool star coronae.

Affiliations

Royal Astronomical Society: Fellow, 1966; secretary, 1981–90; vice-president, 1990–91 and 1996–97; president, 1994–96.

Member of the International Astronomical Union, 1967

Editor of The Observatory, 1968–73

Fellow of the Institute of Physics, 1973

Fellow of the Royal Society, 1990

Doctor of the University of Surrey, 1991

Member of the Science and Engineering Research Council, 1985-90 (Chairman, Solar System Committee, 1983–86; Member, Astronomy, Space and Radio Board, 1979–86; Member, Astronomy and Planetary Science Board, 1986–90)

Member of the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council, 1994–97

Damehood

Carole Jordan was created a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) on 17 June 2006.

Personal

She was married to her Culham Laboratory/ARU colleague Richard Peckover from 1971 until 1983.