{"id":796865,"date":"2026-07-13T05:03:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T05:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/796865\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T05:03:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T05:03:10","slug":"japanese-astronomical-society-ex-president-shigeru-ida-joins-chinas-westlake-university","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/796865\/","title":{"rendered":"Japanese Astronomical Society ex-president Shigeru Ida joins China\u2019s Westlake University"},"content":{"rendered":"

The universe teems with planets, yet their origins and evolution<\/a> remain among science\u2019s most enduring mysteries.Theoretical astrophysicist Shigeru Ida of the Institute of Science Tokyo has spent more than four decades in this field \u2013 and is now bringing his expertise to China<\/a>.Ida, a former president of the Astronomical Society of Japan, has led the Japanese Society for Origins of Life and Astrobiology since 2025, and is widely regarded as one of the world\u2019s most influential planetary scientists<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On July 3, Westlake University in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou announced that Ida had joined its school of science as a distinguished fellow in the Department of Astronomy, effective April.<\/p>\n

In a 2023 address following his inauguration as president of the Astronomical Society of Japan, Ida recalled how his early fascination with the cosmos and speculative science would go on to shape the trajectory of his academic career.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was a high school student struggling to decide my future academic path, what left a profound impact on me was [American filmmaker] Stanley Kubrick\u2019s 2001: A Space Odyssey, which I skipped class to see alone at a cinema \u2026 and Sakyo Komatsu\u2019s science fiction novel, The End of the Endless Flow,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The universe teems with planets, yet their origins and evolution remain among science\u2019s most enduring mysteries.Theoretical astrophysicist Shigeru…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":796866,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[374440,64,63,374437,338437,28301,374436,374439,74814,2270,374438,128,28765,285,374435,134292,90718,98844,208885],"class_list":["post-796865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-astronomical-society-of-japan","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-earth-life-science-institute","tag-ginza","tag-hangzhou","tag-hayashi-prize","tag-japanese-society-for-origins-of-life-and-astrobiology","tag-kyoto-university","tag-nature","tag-professor-shigeru-ida","tag-science","tag-south-china-morning-post","tag-space","tag-tokyo-institute-of-technology","tag-tokyo-university-of-science","tag-university-of-colorado","tag-university-of-tokyo","tag-westlake-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=796865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796865\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/796866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=796865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=796865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=796865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}