Van Heerden , Henrik Petrus (PhD)
Pierre van Heerden was born in Grabouw in the Western Cape. He holds a BSc from Nelson Mandela University and a BSc (Hons) and MSc in Astrophysics and Space Science from the University of Cape Town, which he received as one of the students graduating in the early years of the National Astrophysics and Space Programme (NASSP). He enrolled for a PhD at the University of Johannesburg in 2012 and is currently working in software development and management in Cape Town. In his doctoral study, Mr van Heerden undertook a very ambitious observing campaign at two astronomical observatories in South Africa, spanning several years and unprecedented in its scope and intensity. He selected eight candidates for potential rotation-pulsation interaction as the subjects of his study. Mr van Heerden combined the results of his rigorous observational work with existing data from three other ground-based surveys, in order to generate a formidable database for exploring the interaction of rotation and pulsation in hot main-sequence stars through an intensive and exhaustive process of time series analysis. In his ground- breaking work, Mr van Heerden made the first unequivocal identification of an FaRPB star outside an open cluster, a novel achievement in asteroseismology. His additional discovery of a clear change of pulsation mode in the same star, supported by the weight of his rigorous analysis, constitutes a hugely valuable contribution to the field of asteroseismology.
Supervisor: Prof CA Engelbrecht Co-supervisor: Prof P Martinez (University of Cape Town)
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