Profile
Alistair Glasse
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About Me:
I live in a small village in the Scottish Borders. I have two grown up sons and a cat called Spliff. I am an active climate protester.
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I have worked in astronomy for over 40 years, studying in the UK (Manchester and London); flying helium balloons in texas; working for the European Space Agency in The Netherlands, in Hawaii at a telescope on Mauna Kea and now in Edinburgh building cameras for the Webb telescope and the Extremely Large Telescope in Chile. I now see the main purpose of astronomy as inspiring young people to get into STEM subjects.
The older I get, the more I value people and the world we share, so in my spare time I take part in protests with organisations like Just Stop Oil, Friends of the Earth and Extinction Rebellion.
My youngest son and I have season tickets at Newcastle United.
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My pronouns are:
He/him.
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My Work:
I’m a scientist who leads the engineering teams building the world’s most powerful cameras used for astronomy, in space and on top of mountains.
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I’m the lead scientist for the Webb space observatory’s ‘mid-infrared’ camera ‘MIRI’ and also the UK’s lead scientist for the Extremely Large Telescope spectrometer ‘METIS’. Both MIRI and METIS are designed for studying the atmosphere of exo-planets (planets orbiting distant stars).
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My Interview