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About

Martin Fisher is a leading astronomical instrumentation scientist whose work has been pivotal in equipping the world’s most powerful telescopes with next-generation spectrographs. His primary research areas include high-resolution spectroscopy, robotic telescope automation, and multi-object fiber-fed instrumentation. Fisher’s major contributions center on two flagship projects: HARPS3 and MOONS. He was instrumental in the development of HARPS3, a high-resolution echelle spectrograph (R≈115,000) designed for the roboticized Isaac Newton Telescope, enabling precise radial velocity measurements. More significantly, Fisher has been a key figure in the design, integration, and construction of MOONS, the Multi Object Optical and Near-infrared Spectrograph for the Very Large Telescope (VLT). This groundbreaking instrument combines the VLT’s 8-meter collecting power with 1,000 individually positioned optical fibers, offering unprecedented multiplexing capability for large-scale spectroscopic surveys. His work on the HARPS3 software system—a distributed, event-driven control architecture—has been critical for enabling fully robotic operations. With over 50 citations across his most-cited papers, Fisher’s contributions are foundational to the current and future capabilities of European ground-based astronomy, placing him at the forefront of astronomical instrumentation engineering.