Philip Best

Professor P N Best, FRSE

Position: Head of School
Category: Academic staff
Location: James Clerk Maxwell Building (JCMB)
Room 4323b

School research affiliations

Philip is a member of the following School research institute:

Institute for Astronomy

Research interests

Observational cosmology, studies of galaxy formation, and the high redshift Universe.
Active galactic nuclei (AGN), in particular their host galaxies, and their influence on galaxy evolution.
Radio astronomy, the cosmic evolution of radio sources, their growth, and radio source shocks
Star-forming galaxies at high redshift, and the star-formation history of the Universe
Clusters and groups of galaxies, and the effect of environment on the nature and properties of galaxies.

Administrative roles

I am currently Head of the Institute for Astronomy

I have designed, organised and lectured a number of different courses, from pre-honours to Masters level, as well as serving on the School's Teaching Committee for five years, and being Senior Director of Studies of four years. Currently, I organise and lecture the SH/IM level course "High Energy Astrophysics" as well as leading the "Telescope Group Project" and supervising Senior Honours and Integrated Masters projects.

Recent news

Philip has featured in the following recent School news stories:

Publications

Recent publications

The LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey: Deep Fields Data Release 2 I. The ELAIS-N1 field DOI
T. W. Shimwell, C. L. Hale, P. N. Best, A. Botteon, A. Drabent, M. J. Hardcastle, V. Jelić, J. M.G.H.J. De Jong, R. Kondapally, H. J.A. Röttgering, K. J. Duncan et al., Astronomy and Astrophysics, 695, p. 1-20 (2025)
The host galaxies of radio AGN: New views from combining LoTSS and MaNGA observations DOI
Gaoxiang Jin, Guinevere Kauffmann, Philip N. Best, Shravya Shenoy and Katarzyna Malek, Astronomy and Astrophysics, 694, p. 1-17 (2025)
A novel Bayesian approach for decomposing the radio emission of quasars – II. Link between quasar radio emission and black hole mass DOI
B. H. Yue, K. J. Duncan, P. N. Best, M. I. Arnaudova, L. K. Morabito, J. W. Petley, H. J.A. Röttgering, S. Shenoy and D. J.B. Smith, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 537, 2, p. 858-875 (2025)
High-z Stellar Masses Can Be Recovered Robustly with JWST Photometry DOI
R. K. Cochrane, H. Katz, R. Begley, C. C. Hayward and P. N. Best, Astrophysical Journal Letters, 978, 2, p. 1-14 (2025)
MIGHTEE: the continuum survey Data Release 1 DOI
C. L. Hale, I. Heywood, M. J. Jarvis, I. H. Whittam, P. N. Best, Fangxia An, R. A.A. Bowler, I. Harrison, A. Matthews, D. J.B. Smith et al., Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 536, 3, p. 2187-2211 (2025)

View all 335 publications by Philip Best

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