About

Mike Rich is 65 and we like to celebrate his scientific career and achievements in the study of the Galactic bulge and beyond. Under his PhD supervisor Jeremy Mould, Mike discussed a thesis on “The abundances and kinematics of K giants in the galactic Bulge”, emphasizing the importance of the Galactic bulge in the build-up of the Milky Way galaxy. Mike’s paper in 1988 (Rich 1988, AJ 95, 828) is considered the pioneer work on chemical abundances and kinematics in the Galactic bulge.

Already at this early epoch, Mike showed the importance of coupling chemistry and kinematics to understand the formation of the Galactic bulge. In the early 2000s, Mike soon recognized the power of the upcoming infrared facilities (such as the Keck telescopes), and he led there the first infrared high-resolution studies in the Galactic bulge. He conducted a Bulge radial velocity survey from Cerro-Tololo (BRAVA) and demonstrated for the first time that the Bulge rotates cylindrically, a major important puzzle solved in understanding the “heart” of the Milky Way.

Needless to mention that Mike’s contribution was determinant to promote the upcoming high-resolution spectroscopic surveys that boomed over the last decades. They revealed important chemical and dynamical features such as the peanut shape of the bulge and the existence of two or more stellar populations with different abundance patterns. Lately, he conducted the Blanco Dark Energy Camera (DECam) Bulge survey using DECam on the CTIO 4m telescope. With about 250 million sources this is by far the largest amount of data in the galactic Bulge so far. 

Moreover, Mike's contributions have been critical on an impressive variety of other astrophysical topics, such as globular clusters, stellar populations in M31, early-type galaxies, dwarf galaxies and galaxies in the high-red shift universe.