Rate My Professor Paolo Padoan

Paolo Padoan is a Research Professor and Visiting Scholar in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Dartmouth College. He also serves as an ICREA Professor at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences (ICCUB), University of Barcelona. Padoan earned his B.S. from the University of Padova in 1992 and his Ph.D. in Astrophysics from the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, in 1997. His research centers on the origin of stars, a key process in galaxy evolution and cosmology. Stars dominate the energy budget of the interstellar medium and drive chemical enrichment in galaxies, with the first massive stars contributing to cosmic reionization. To investigate star formation, Padoan conducts numerical simulations of supersonic, self-gravitating, magnetized turbulence, using parameters matched to star-forming gas in galaxies. These simulations cover vast scales, from entire galaxies down to circumstellar disks.

Padoan's contributions include the inertial-inflow model for massive star formation and analyses of protoplanetary disk formation through pre-main sequence Bondi-Hoyle accretion, which accounts for observed disk masses, sizes, lifetimes, and misalignments by emphasizing environmental mass and angular momentum capture over internal viscous processes. He has derived statistics of angular momentum in supersonic turbulence, revealing stronger density fluctuations that enhance angular momentum beyond prior expectations. Key publications include 'Protoplanetary Disks from Pre-Main Sequence Bondi-Hoyle Accretion' (Nature Astronomy, 2024), 'Globular cluster formation from inertial inflows: accreting extremely massive stars as the origin of abundance anomalies' (MNRAS, 2025), 'Will ALMA reveal the true core mass function of protoclusters?' (MNRAS, 2023), and 'The Origin of Massive Stars: The Inertial-Inflow Model' (ApJ, 2020). His work has advanced understanding of turbulence properties and star formation mechanisms through large-scale computational experiments.