Professor Eric Priest FRS

Eric Priest is an Applied Mathematician who works in Solar Physics and Astronomy.

He has made major contributions to understanding fundamental plasma physics processes that are responsible for many dynamic processes on the Sun and have wide applications in solar system science and astronomy. In particular,  magnetohydrodynamics describes the subtle and nonlinear interaction between magnetic fields and plasmas across the universe.  It is described in his ground-breaking research monographs Solar Magnetohydrodynamics (1982) and Magnetohydrodynamics of the Sun (2014).

He has pioneered the study of magnetic reconnection, a process which converts magnetic energy into other forms (kinetic energy, heat and fast particle energy) and which lies at the core of solar flares and many other dynamic releases of energy in the cosmos, as summarised in his research monograph Magnetic Reconnection (2000). Eruptive solar flares are crucial for our civilisation as drivers of coronal mass ejections, huge eruptions of plasma and magnetic field that dominate the space weather around the Earth and occasionally are superflares.

He has also made key advances in understanding magnetohydrodynamic waves and instabilities in solar prominences, in the initiation of solar flares by eruptive instability or catastrophe, and in the heating of the outer solar atmosphere to over a million degrees by comparison with the solar surface temperature of 6000 degrees K. He founded a world-class research group in St Andrews which has combined state-of-the-art numerical simulations to understand puzzling observations from a wide range of solar space satellites and ground-based telescopes.

He is highly committed to the aims of the Society, in particular to wide-ranging international research, to interdisciplinarity, to environmental issues, to equality, diversity and inclusion, and to promoting, supporting and communicating excellence in science. He has wide interests in the arts and music.