Phil Charles

I've worked for ~45 years in X-ray astronomy, on topics ranging from supernova remnants to active stellar coronae to X-ray binaries in our Galaxy. It is the latter I have concentrated on since 1990, measuring black hole masses in interacting binaries, including the closest and still most accurately measured and studied system, V404 Cyg, which was discovered in 1989 as an X-ray transient, and had a second massive outburst in June 2015. I have also had spells working at the Anglo-Dutch-Spanish observatory on La Palma (the Isaac Newton Group) and as Director of the South African Astronomical Observatory in Cape Town.