Gaia People

Lennart Lindegren

Lund Observatory

Lennart Lindegren is a member of the staff at Lund Observatory, Sweden, where he obtained his PhD in 1980. Space astrometry and its various applications have been his main interests in astronomy ever since 1976, when he was `recruited' to the Hipparcos project by Erik Høg. In 1990 he took over from Erik as leader of the Northern Data Analysis Consortium (NDAC) for the reduction of the Hipparcos data. As one of the early proposers of the Gaia concept, and subsequently as member of the Gaia Science Team, he has contributed to many aspects of this mission, in particular the astrometric instrument design and accuracy analysis, and the development of concepts and algorithms for the data analysis.

Within the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC), Lindegren leads the scientific implementation of the Astrometric Global Iterative Solution, a core element in the astrometric processing of the Gaia data. Since October 2006, he is also project coordinator for the Marie Curie Research Training Network ELSA (European Leadership in Space Astrometry). The aims of this network are to develop the science of space astrometry and train the next generation of researchers in this area.

[Published: 23/05/2005 | Updated: 08/02/2007]