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Douglas N. C. Lin is Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He earned his BSc from McGill University, his PhD from the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge University, and performed postdoctoral research at both Harvard and Cambridge. In 1979 he took an Assistant Professorship at UCSC, and has remained there since. He is also the founding director of the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Peking University.
"Douglas Lin's principal research interests are in the origin of the solar system, star formation, astrophysical fluid dynamics, dynamics of stellar clusters, structure of galaxies, active galactic nuclei, and galaxy formation," according to his UCSC faculty home page. He is one of the scientists who collaborates closely with observational colleagues Burton Jones and Arnold Klemola in working towards accurate estimates of the properties of the Large Magellanic Cloud. Lin observes that, over recent years, astronomers have newly expanded horizons within which to research. They have progressed from having only planets within a single solar system, our own, to study, to the point where now they are currently in the midst of "a revolution in the search for extra solar planets. In little over a decade, over 200 extra solar planets have been discovered." This growth of potential study subjects has led Lin to look toward observing the formation of planetary systems from their creation through to more mature systems, since scientists can now observe "dozens of mature systems and dozens more in birth throes." His research goal, from the study of this rich new data, is to eventually construct "a unified theory which can explain the statistical properties of planetary systems."
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