报告人介绍：
      Marten van Kerkwijk obtained his MSc (1988) and PhD (1993) at the University of Amsterdam. In the years 1994-1996, he became a Hubble Fellow at Caltech, and a bit briefly (1997 to mid-1998), as a postdoc at IoA.  After that, he was first junior and then senior lecturer/researcher at Utrecht University. In 2003, he moved to U. Toronto.
     He is interested generally in compact objects, stars and binaries, their structure, formation and evolution, and their use to infer fundamental physical properties. Currently, he is particularly excited by the possibilities of using neutron stars to study high-density and high field-strength physics, in conditions out of reach of terrestrial experiment, and to solve associated astronomical puzzles. He is also starting in a new direction to tackle problems associated with the formation of stars, in particular binary stars.
 
报告摘要：
    Neutron stars contain the densest matter and support the strongest magnetic fields known.  I will describe our attempts to use the so-called Isolated Neutron Stars as laboratories for dense-matter and strong-field physics, and discuss what we have learned about the properties with which neutron stars are born.