Born in the UK, and following degrees at the Univerities of Bristol and Sussex, Martin Elvis got his PhD under Prof. Ken Pounds at the University of Leicester (UK) in 1978 for work with the Ariel V satellite. Ariel V was only the 2nd satellite to be devoted to X-ray astronomy. While doing his PhD he discovered the brightest X-ray source ever seen in the sky, apart from the sun. (That sounds easy, but it was a `transient' source, A0620-00, and was really faint at the time.) His PhD thesis demonstrated that powerful X-ray emission was a normal feature of Active Galactic Nuclei (or "AGN"). AGN X-ray emission has been a lively area of research ever since
He moved to the USA full time in 1980 to work on the first true X-ray telescope, the "Einstein Observatory", at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, under Riccardo Giacconi. He worked on many aspects of the Einstein mission, and used the imaging power of Einstein to derive the first X-ray spectra of quasars, the more powerful cousins of AGN, and to discover extended X-ray nebulae around nearby AGN, and a peculiar class of galaxy that shows activity only in X-rays (now called 'XBONGS'). With Andrew Lawrence he proposed in 1982 that much of the confusion in the classification of the AGN "zoo" was due to a flattened obscuring region of dust and gas (Lawrence and Elvis 1982). This was confirmed and extended by the spectacular polarization study of Antonucci and Miller just 3 years later, which is now the basis of the "Unified Scheme" for AGN.
With the demise of the Einstein Observatory in 1981 he pursued AGN at all other wavelengths using a wide variety of telescopes. (IUE, IRAS, IRTF, MMT, VLA, UKIRT, JCMT) leading, among other works, to the 1994 "Atlas of Quasar Energy Distributions", which has served as a standard since. With the revival of imaging X-ray astronomy on the 1990 launch of ROSAT and then ASCA, he pushed studies of AGN and quasars to high redshifts and extreme properties. Applying the multi-wavelength approach to ROSAT spectra and ultraviolet spectra he, with his colleagues, discovered a hot wind from a number of AGN, peaking in 1995 with a UV/X-ray study of the "Seyfert galaxy" NGC 5548.
In 1991 he began to work at the Chandra X-ray Center, concentrating on the scientific software needs of this revolutionary new observatory (then called AXAF). After 1995 this work prevented him persuing his normal program of observations, and left him to contemplate AGN winds over and over again. The result was a model for the structure of quasars that unites into a simple picture much of the 10,000 papers worth of confusing knowledge about the emission and absorption features in their spectra. This model has survived a number of tests over the past few years, so there may actually be something to it.
This model of the "Quasar Atmosphere" remains the main focus of his research, although he is also trying to make his 1994 "Atlas" obsolete, and is involved in proposals for new missions that can greatly exceed Chandra in their potential for revolutionary discoveries.
Dr. Elvis has published over 200 papers in refereed journals, and is one of the 250 most Highly Cited Researchers in astronomy and space physics, as determined by ISI.