Lucinda Douglas-Menzies

Professor John Brown, 1947 – 2019. Astronomer

About this artwork

This photograph of Professor John Brown is part of a series of portraits of leading astronomers by Lucinda Douglas-Menzies. Brown’s interest in astronomy stemmed from reading Sir Patrick Moore’s writings at the age of eight. Brown has since become Regius Professor of Astronomy at the University of Glasgow and the tenth Astronomer Royal for Scotland. Typical of Douglas-Menzies’s style, she has photographed Brown in his familiar surroundings of the Physics and Astronomy building at the University of Glasgow. He looks upwards and out of the composition as if deep in thought, possibly alluding to his role as a theorist. The lighting accentuates his forehead, which, combined with the image of the earth discernable in the background, calls to mind the moon orbiting the earth.

Updated before 2020

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Lucinda Douglas-Menzies

Lucinda Douglas-Menzies