Lyle Hoffman

Research interests: radioastronomy and cosmology. He conducts observations at Arecibo Observatory, the 305m radio telescope in Puerto Rico, and at the Very Large Array in New Mexico. Student research assistants are often involved in this work. The data acquired at these observatories allow him to investigate the internal structure and dynamics of individual dwarf and spiral galaxies; the motions of these galaxies about the Local Supercluster of galaxies and more distant structures; and the effects of the galaxies’ environment on their gas content and evolution.

Lyle uses the workstation in his office heavily for detailed analysis of the data he brings back from the radiotelescopes. He has been a member of the ALFALFA consortium since its inception, conducting a large-scale survey of neutral hydrogen in the local universe whether or not there are visible stars embedded in the gas. Lyle’s work has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, and he maintains collaborations with astronomers at Cornell University, Queen’s University in Ontario, and Tel Aviv University along with those at Arecibo. In the recent past, he has supervised student research and honors theses in numerical simulation of galaxy groups, in analysis of neutral hydrogen data for dwarf galaxies, and in the acoustics of the human vocal tract. Students have been named as co-authors on several recent publications of Arecibo data. Abhiram Sripat ’20 worked with Lyle during the summer of 2018.