Elbaz's grandparents moved to France from Morocco at the beginning of the 20th century. He was born and raised in the Paris area. He attended the École Nationale Supérieure de Physique (ENSPG) in Grenoble, where he obtained an engineering degree in 1990. He completed his PhD in Astrophysics in 1994 at the Université Joseph Fourier in Grenoble with a thesis entitled "Origine du fer dans le milieu intra-amas et distribution du gaz X dans les amas de galaxies".[2] His supervisors were James Lequeux and Monique Arnaud.[3] In 2005, he was awarded a habilitation from the Paris-Sud University.
Elbaz has supervised 14 postdoctoral researchers and 7 PhD students, two of whom received awards for their dissertations: H. Aussel (1999)[4] and C. Schreiber (2015).[5] He has been teaching the Galaxy Evolution[6] course in the Masters program entitled Recherche Astronomie, Astrophysique et Ingénierie Spatiale de Paris since 2005.[7]
The advent of the Spitzer Space Telescope in 2003 enabled extremely deep observations in the mid-infrared field. Elbaz and his collaborators analyzed observations from the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey and demonstrated that the star formation rate of individual galaxies increases due to environmental effects up to a critical galaxy density at redshift one, above which it decreases again, concluding that it suggests that galaxy evolution is not independent from structure formation at larger scales in the universe.[11]
Five years later, using deep far infrared observations from the Herschel Space Observatory, Elbaz led a study, writing that galaxies across cosmic time form stars in two main modes: one placing them in the "main sequence", where their star formation rate correlates tightly with their stellar mass, and the other where the galaxies are more compact and form stars more efficiently departing from this correlation.[12] Using observations from ALMA, his group also discovered[13] a dominant population of optically invisible massive galaxies in the early universe.[14]
Member of the ESA SPICA Science Team, 2018–2021[17]
Member of the Euclid France steering committee, 2013–present
Member of the ESA Astronomy Working Group,[18] 2015–2018
President of the International Space Advisory Board for the SPICA satellite for JAXA, 2015–2016
Public outreach
Elbaz has been interviewed on various topics of modern astrophysics by French media, including Le Monde,[19]France Culture,[20] and Sciences et Avenir.[21] He has written scenarios and participated in shows that involve science and art that have been presented in various theaters in France,[22][23][24] including:
"Jonglerie Astrale"[29] (with the juggler Vincent de Lavenère[30])
Elbaz has authored several science books:
A la recherche de l'univers invisible: matière noire, énergie sombre, trous noirs,[31] 2016, Odile Jacob; it received the "Prix Sciences et Philosophie" in 2017.[32]
Αναζητώντας το αόρατο σύμπαν: σκοτεινή ύλη, σκοτεινή ενέργεια, μαύρες τρύπες,[33] 2021, Crete University Press.
