Carole Jordan
Dame Carole Jordan, DBE, FRS, FRAS, FInstP (born 19 July 1941) is a British physicist, astrophysicist, astronomer and academic. She is Professor Emeritus of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow at Somerville College, Oxford. From 1994 to 1996 she was the first woman President of the Royal Astronomical Society, and in 2005 she won the society’s Gold Medal, only the third woman to receive it after Caroline Herschel and Vera Rubin. She led the Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics at Oxford from 2003 to 2004 and again from 2005 to 2008, making her one of Britain’s earliest female astronomy professors.
Jordan studied at Harrow County Grammar School for Girls and University College London, earning a BSc in 1962 and a PhD in 1965 under C. W. Allen. Her early work included studying distortion in lunar craters and the solar ultraviolet spectrum. She developed important methods to diagnose electron density and temperature in solar and stellar plasmas and helped determine how elements are distributed in stars. Her 1965 coronal abundance work launched a lasting career in solar and stellar spectroscopy. After the 1978 International Ultraviolet Explorer mission, she focused on stellar coronae and chromospheric activity and contributed to instrument development for ultraviolet and X-ray studies of the Sun and stars.
Her portrait is in the National Portrait Gallery in recognition of her career. She was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2006 for services to physics and astronomy.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 23:10 (CET).