AAS names winners of awards, prizes

Work ranging from the study of asteroids, stellar spectroscopy, and extrasolar planets to the investigation of distant galaxies and the development of astronomical detectors has been honored by the American Astronomical Society in its selection of nine award winners for this year.

The 2007 Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics, awarded jointly by the American Institute of Physics and AAS, is going to Robert C. Kennicutt Jr “for his outstanding contributions to extragalactic astrophysics, in particular to our understanding of the large-scale properties of star formation in galaxies,” according to the award citation. Kennicutt is the Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at the University of Cambridge.

David L. Lambert is being awarded the Henry Norris Russell Lectureship for 2007, the society’s highest honor. Director of the McDonald Observatory at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is also the Isabel McCutcheon Harte Centennial Chair of Astronomy, Lambert is receiving the honor “for contributions in the field of stellar spectroscopy and abundances, which have profoundly influenced our knowledge of stellar evolution, nucleosynthesis, and their effects on the chemical evolution of the universe.”

The Helen B. Warner Prize for 2007 is being presented to Sara Seager, Ellen Swallow Richards Associate Professor in the department of Earth, atmospheric, and planetary sciences at MIT. She is receiving the honor “for her development of fundamental techniques for understanding, analyzing, and finding the atmospheres of extrasolar planets.”

Ann Hornschemeier is receiving the 2007 Annie Jump Cannon Award “for her x-ray investigations of distant galaxies.” The award citation said Hornschemeier is “a leader in her field as demonstrated by her energetic advocacy of x-ray astronomy and her important role in defining the scientific rationale for the Constellation-X mission.” Hornschemeier is an astrophysicist in the X-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

The AAS Education Prize for 2007 is going to Keith Noll, astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. He is receiving the prize “for his creation and leadership of the Hubble Heritage Project of the Space Telescope Science Institute; for his innovative use of the power and beauty of Hubble Space Telescope images to effectively communicate the scope and value of our scientific enterprise; for his dedication and commitment to making astronomical data and science accessible to everyone; and [for] making the Hubble Space Telescope one of our community’s most effective public education tools.” The citation also commended the Hubble Heritage Project team “for the extraordinary reach and positive impact that the Hubble Heritage Project has had on the worldwide public understanding of science, astronomy, and the universe.”

Stephen P. Maran, AAS press officer, is receiving the 2007 George Van Biesbroeck Prize. Maran was selected “in recognition of his outstanding and unselfish long-term contribution to the astronomical community as press officer for the American Astronomical Society.”

The Chambliss Amateur Achievement Medal for 2006, the first presentation of this award, goes to Brian D. Warner, owner and director of the Palmer Divide Observatory near Monument, Colorado. Warner is receiving the award, according to the citation, “for his many contributions to the photometric study of asteroids. His skillful, methodical observations using multiple CCD-equipped telescopes at Palmer Divide Observatory have resulted in the publication of more than 200 asteroid light curves. His discovery of numerous binaries in the main belt has overturned the idea that binary asteroids form only through tidal interactions with planets. … His efforts have facilitated a 21st-century renaissance in precision measurements of asteroid light curves.”

Barbara S. Ryden, associate professor of astronomy at the Ohio State University in Columbus, is receiving the Chambliss Astronomical Writing Medal for 2006, the first presentation of this award, on the basis of her book Introduction to Cosmology (Addison Wesley, 2002). The award committee wrote, “In a field becoming crowded with textbooks, Ryden’s stands out for its rigor, its coverage, and its exceptionally fine writing style. Introduction to Cosmology fills a gap in the field because there are a number of graduate level textbooks, and many semi-technical books for an introductory course, but very few pitched for a one-semester course for junior or senior astronomy undergraduates. It is an enormous challenge to distill the material of a dynamic and highly technical field like cosmology into this form of presentation.”

The 2007 Joseph Weber Award for Astronomical Instrumentation is being presented to Harvey Moseley, a senior astrophysicist at Goddard. The award is being conferred on Moseley “for his extraordinary contributions over two decades to the development of astronomical detectors covering a huge wavelength range—from x rays to the submillimeter. These detectors have been used in some of the most successful of space missions from COBE to Spitzer that have profoundly changed our understanding of the universe.”