Xavier Barcons
European Southern Observatory (ESO)
Director - General
Xavier Barcons has been Director General of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) since 2017 and was President of the ESO Council from 2012 to 2014. He has contributed substantially to several of ESO’s major projects including the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the next-generation Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) presently under construction in Chile. He started the first X-ray astronomy group in Spain was a Research Professor at the Spanish National Research Council and has participated in many large projects, collaborations and consortia, including surveys with the XMM-Newton satellite. Barcons research focused on X-ray absorption lines from distant active galaxies and quasars and the intergalactic medium.