Galaxy clusters are the largest gravitationally bound objects in the Universe. They contain thousands of galaxies which formed at a similar time and in a similar environment and are therefore excellent laboratories for the study of galaxy evolution.

In this talk Dr Stott will describe observations of their constituent parts: The galaxies and their black holes; the extremely hot X-ray emitting gas that surrounds them; and their giant Dark Matter haloes. He will then compare to our theoretical understanding and finally finish with a description of the state-of-the-art observations we are performing of the most distant clusters known.

Dr Stott began his road to becoming an astrophysics researcher by reading undergraduate Physics at Oxford. This led to a Phd position at Durham University, where he wrote a thesis on the 11 billion year evolution of galaxy clusters and the most massive galaxies in the Universe.
He went on to postdoctoral research positions at both Liverpool John Moores University and a return to Durham. During the latter he became heavily involved in projects to study distant clusters and the ancestors of galaxies like our own Milky Way using the revolutionary KMOS instrument on the Very Large Telescope in Chile. In 2015 he began a Hintze Fellowship at the Oxford Centre for Astrophysical Surveys, where he continues my research in galaxy evolution and clusters.