Donald Lynden-Bell

Donald Lynden-Bell CBE FRS (born 5 April 1935) is an English astrophysicist, best known for his theories that galaxies contain massive black holes at their centre, and that such black holes are the principal source of energy in quasars. He was a co-recipient, with Maarten Schmidt, of the inaugural Kavli Prize for Astrophysics in 2008. Lynden-Bell has been the president of the Royal Astronomical Society. He currently works at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge; he was the Institute's first director. Educated at the University of Cambridge, in 1962 he published research with Olin Eggen and Allan Sandage arguing that our galaxy originated through the dynamic collapse of a single large gas cloud. In 1969 he published his theory that quasars are powered by massive black holes accreting material. From counting dead quasars, he deduced that most massive galaxies have black holes at their centres.