AAS Divisions Award Four Prizes

Three divisions of the American Astronomical Society have announced the winners of their awards for 2003.

The Dirk Brouwer Award, presented by the division on dynamical astronomy, went this year to William Ward, institute scientist in the space studies department at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. He was recognized for his “many contributions to the field of dynamical astronomy over the past 30 years.”

The historical astronomy division awarded the LeRoy Doggett Prize for Historical Astronomy to Michael Hoskin, a fellow of Churchill College at Cambridge University. According to the citation, he has “long been renowned for both his scholarship and the high standards he has maintained in editing and publishing,” and, as founder and editor of the Journal for the History of Astronomy , he has “helped to define the field of historical astronomy and give it a central focus.”

Reta Beebe received the Harold Masursky Award, given by the division for planetary sciences, for her “outstanding service to planetary science and exploration” through a combination of managerial, programmatic, and public service activities. Beebe is a professor of astronomy at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces.

The division for planetary sciences also awarded its Gerard P. Kuiper Prize to Steven Ostro, senior research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. He received the award for his “years of research demonstrating the power of radar techniques to wrest information from asteroids.”