Garik Israelian: “Flat Earth thinking is a problem that psychology should deal with, not astronomy”

With the summit of Teide above his head and a sea of clouds at his feet, Garik Israelian (Yerevan, Armenia, 63 years old) moves around the Tenerife facilities of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, at 2,930 meters above sea level, as the sun sets over the neighboring island of La Palma and the telescopes start to move. After completing his PhD in Astrophysics with the rigors of the Soviet university, he lived in Utrecht, Brussels, and Sydney before settling in Tenerife in 1997.

In 2010, he shared the prestigious Viktor Ambartsumian prize with Michel Mayor (future Nobel laureate in Physics) and Nuno Santos for their contribution to the understanding of the formation of planetary systems. He invested part of the prize money in organizing Starmus, a science and music festival that a year later brought together in the Canary Islands American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin (the first two humans to walk on the Moon) with Russian cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, who made the first spacewalk in history.