The George Darwin Lectureship is an award granted by the
Royal Astronomical Society to a 'distinguished and eloquent speaker' on the subject of
Astronomy including
astrochemistry,
astrobiology
Astrobiology, and the related field of exobiology, is an interdisciplinary scientific field that studies the origins, early evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe. Astrobiology is the multidisciplinary field that investig ...
and
astroparticle physics
Astroparticle physics, also called particle astrophysics, is a branch of particle physics that studies elementary particles of astronomical origin and their relation to astrophysics and cosmology. It is a relatively new field of research emergin ...
.
[ The award is named after the astronomer George Darwin and has been given annually since 1984.][ The speaker may be based in the UK or overseas.
]
George Darwin Lecturers
Laureates of the award include:[ ]
*2022: Alan Fitzsimmons
This is a list of minor-planet discoverers credited by the Minor Planet Center with the discovery of one or several minor planets (such as near-Earth object, near-Earth and main-belt asteroids, Jupiter trojans and Distant minor planet, distant obj ...
*2021: Filippo Fraternali
*2020: Ofer Lahav
*2019: Chris Done
Chris is a short form of various names including Christopher, Christian, Christina, Christine, and Christos. Chris is also used as a name in its own right, however it is not as common.
People with the given name
*Chris Abani (born 1966), Nige ...
* 2018: Stephen J. Smartt: "Kilonovae and the birth of multi-messenger astronomy" [
* 2017 ]Catherine Heymans
Catherine Heymans (born 1978/1979) is a British astrophysicist, the Astronomer Royal for Scotland, and a professor at the University of Edinburgh based at the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh.
Early life
Heymans was born and grew up in Hitchin, ...
: ''Observing the Dark side of our Universe''Katherine Blundell
Katherine Mary Blundell is a Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford and a supernumerary research fellow at St John's College, Oxford. Previously, she held a Royal Society University Research Fellowship, and fellowships from t ...
: Rapid Evolution in Astronomy[ See page 62.]
* 2014 James S. Dunlop : The Cosmic History of Star Formation[ See page 182.]
* 2013 Eline Tolstoy : Galactic Palaeontology[ See page 97.]
* 2012 Andrew Collier Cameron: Winds, Tides and the Migration of Hot Jupiters
* 2011 Michael Turner : Connecting quarks to the cosmos
* 2010 Carlos Frenk
Carlos Silvestre Frenk (born 27 October 1951) is a Mexican-British cosmologist and the Ogden Professor of Fundamental Physics at Durham University.University of Durham Department of PhysicsResearch in the Department: Status and Outlook March ...
: The Small-Scale Structure of the Universe
* 2009 Neil Gehrels : SWIFT and its results
* 2008 Alan Watson : The Birth of Cosmic Ray Astronomy on the Argentine Pampas
* 2007 Reinhard Genzel : The Massive Black Hole and Nuclear Star Cluster of the Milky Way
* 2006 Michael Werner : The Spitzer Space Telescope: Probing the universe with Infrared Eyes
* 2005 Joseph Silk : The Dark Side of the Universe
* 2004 Mike Edmunds
Mike (Michael) Edmunds is a British astrophysicist, known for his research on the interpretation of the chemical composition of the Universe and the origin of interstellar dust.
Education
He received his undergraduate degree and his doctorate ...
: The Elemental Universe
* 2003 Anneila Sargent : The Formation of Planetary Systems
* 2002 Ramesh Narayan : Evidence for the Black Hole Event Horizon
* 2001 Wendy Freedman
Wendy Laurel Freedman (born July 17, 1957) is a Canadian-American astronomer, best known for her measurement of the Hubble constant, and as director of the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, California, and Las Campanas, Chile. She is now the J ...
: The Expansion Rate of the Universe
* 2000 Kip Thorne : Gravitational Waves: Opening a New Window onto the Universe.
* 1999 Geoff Marcy : Extrasolar Planets
* 1998 Michael Perryman : A Stereoscopic View of the Galaxy
* 1997 Simon White : The Formation of Galaxies
* 1996 Andrew Fabian : Broad Iron Lines from AGN: Test of Strong Gravity
* 1995 Bohdan Paczyński : Gravitational micro-lensing and the search for dark matter
* 1994 Scott Tremaine : Is the Solar System Stable?
* 1993 Riccardo Giacconi : Recent observations from the Hubble Space Telescope
* 1992 John Barrow : Unprincipled Cosmology
* 1991 Sandra Faber : How galaxies (probably) formed
* 1990 Andre Maeder : Massive Stars in Galaxies
* 1989 Roger Blandford : Gravitational Lenses
* 1988 Roger Tayler : The Sun as a Star
* 1987 Wal Sargent
Wallace Leslie William Sargent (February 15, 1935 – October 29, 2012) was a British-born American astronomer and the Ira S. Bowen Professor of Astronomy at California Institute of Technology.
Education
Sargent was born in Elsham, No ...
: Observing the evolution of large scale structure in the Universe
* 1986 Gerald Neugebauer : Infrared astronomy
* 1985 Robert Wilson: A perspective of ultraviolet astronomy
* 1984 Icko Iben : The life of an intermediate mass star - in isolation/in a close binary
See also
* List of astronomy awards
References
{{Royal Astronomical Society
Astronomy prizes
Royal Astronomical Society