Given all the doom and gloom going around I thought I’d take the opportunity to share some good news and also offer my public congratulations to the all the winners of medals and awards announced yesterday by the Royal Astronomical Society. Let me draw particular attention to the following subset, purely on the grounds that I know them and their work personally (and because they’ve all either been mentioned on this blog recently and/or been known to read it from time to time and/or have recently published in the Open Journal of Astrophysics and/or are on the Editorial Board thereof).
First, the Gold Medal goes to Professor George Efstathiou of Cambridge University a true giant of cosmology (metaphorically speaking of course – I’m actually taller than him):
I’m looking forward to George receiving his medal so he can tell us what kind of chocolate is inside.
Second, Professor Alan Heavens of South Kensington Technical College Imperial College London who gets the Eddington Medal:
I should mention that among many other things Alan has worked extensively on the application of Bayesian methods to cosmological data.
Third, Professor Catherine Heymans of Edinburgh, Astronomer Royal for Scotland, wins the Herschel medal;
Catherine was actually a PhD student supervised by Alan Heavens back in the day. I wonder if this is the first time that a PhD student/supervisor combination has won RAS medals in the same year?
Correction: I’m now told that Catherine actually did her PhD in Oxford supervised by Lance Miller so I withdraw the question.
And last but by no means least we have Professor Pedro Gil Ferreira who will give this year’s Gerald Whitrow lecture:
Two interesting facts about Pedro: (i) a direct English translation of “Pedro Ferreira” would be “Peter Smith”; and (ii) he is a member of the Editorial Board of the Open Journal of Astrophysics.
Congratulations to them and indeed to all the winners of awards and medals, a complete list of whom may be found here.
P.S. It suddenly struck me when I saw the announcements yesterday evening that it’s now two years since I last attended the RAS Ordinary Meeting in person or the RAS Club Dinner. Let’s hope these can start again reasonably soon.
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