The Fellows program of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), the major organization of professional astronomers in North America, was established in 2019 to honor members for their contributions toward the AAS mission of enhancing and sharing humanity's scientific understanding of the universe. The following members of ASD were honored among the first group of AAS Fellows, announced Feb. 25:
Edward Cheng
Alice Harding
Sangeeta Malhotra
Maxim Markevitch
John Mather
William Pence
Tod Strohmayer
Jean Hebb Swank
Kimberly Weaver
Congratulations to Goddard scientists Ira Thorpe and Jake Slutsky, both in 663, who are part of the LISA Pathfinder (LPF) team, which was recently awarded the 2017 Space Technology Award from the American Astronautical Society.
For groundbreaking contributions in gravitational-wave simulations of binary black holes and other numerous contributions in gravitational-wave data analysis in support of future space-based gravitational wave mission, such as LISA.
Please congratulate our scientists Neil Gehrels, Jordan Camp and Leo Singer on their receipt of a Special Award made to the LIGO team by Yuri Milner. The award is a special addition to the Breakthrough Prizes in Fundamental Physics awarded every fall. The LIGO team are receiving this award for the first detection of ripples in space time, known as gravitational waves, from the collision of two gigantic black holes. Further details are contained in the New York Times article.
The award is made jointly to Alice and Dr Roger Romani from Stanford
University. The citation reads "To Alice K Harding and Roger W. Romani for
establishing a theoretical framework for understanding gamma-ray pulsars."
Dr Demos Kazanas is named as a Fellow of the American Physical Society. The
citation reads "For diverse contributions to Astrophysics, ranging from a
1980 independent resolution, of the cosmological horizon problem using the
vacuum energy of spontaneously broken gauge theory -- to the recent idea
that AGN appearance depends on the properties of MHD winds launched from
their accretion disks."
The Lindsey award is presented to John Baker and Joan Cenbrella for their groundbreaking research in the simulation of the gravitational wave signature from the final stages of the merging black holes.
Theoretical work is not often honored by the Lindsay award; most of the awards are presented for observational discoveries made with new NASA missions. The work by Centrella and Baker is of special importance to NASA, since the work is a strong driving force for the design of the LISA mission. Knowledge of the gravitational waveforms now provides a strong basis for mission requirements. So, this work, while being heralded as a breakthrough in the gravitational physics community, is also of vital importance to the development of a NASA mission.
