The Herschel Medal is awarded by the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) for "investigations of outstanding merit in observational astrophysics". It is awarded for a single piece of work so that younger scientists can be candidates for the award. It is named after the RAS's first president, William Herschel. The medal was first awarded in 1974. From 1974 to 2004 the Herschel Medal was only awarded every three years. From 2004 the frequency was shortened to two years and from 2012 it was awarded annually. The medal has been shared twice, in 1977 and 1986. It has been awarded 28 times to a total of 30 people (28 men, two women), mostly from the UK.

Medallists Source: Royal Astronomical Society

Photo Year Medalist(s) Field References 1974 John Paul Wild Radio astronomy 1977 Arno PenziasRobert Woodrow Wilson Discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation 1980 Gérard de Vaucouleurs Galaxy classification and cataloging 1983 William W. Morgan Stellar classification 1986 Albert BoggessRobert Wilson Ultraviolet astronomy 1989 Jocelyn Bell Burnell Pulsars 1992 Andrew Lyne Radio astronomy 1995 George Isaak Helioseismology 1998 Gerry Neugebauer Infrared astronomy 2001 Patrick Thaddeus Structure and distribution of molecular clouds 2004 Keith Horne Cataclysmic variable stars and exoplanets 2006 Govind Swarup Radio astronomy 2008 Max Pettini Extragalactic cosmology 2010 James H. Hough Polarimetry 2012 Mike Irwin Digital optical and infrared surveys 2013 Michael Kramer Pulsars 2014 Reinhard Genzel Galactic and Extragalactic astronomy 2015 Stephen Eales Submillimetre astronomy 2016 James Dunlop Galaxy formation 2017 Simon Lilly Galaxy evolution 2018 Tom Marsh Doppler Tomography 2019 Nial Tanvir Studies of the Explosive Universe 2020 Rob Fender Black hole accretion 2021 Stephen Smartt Awarded for his "time-domain studies of transient phenomena, leading ground-breaking progress in our understanding of core collapse supernova and of gravitational wave kilonovae." https://ras.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2021-01/Smartt_Stephen_Herschel.pdf Herschel Medal - Professor Stephen J. Smartt (Short citation), date: 06/01/2021, viewed on 31st October 2021. 2022 Catherine Heymans Weak Gravitational Lensing, and measurement of fundamental cosmological parameters. https://ras.ac.uk/sites/default/files/RAS%20Herschel%20Medal%202022%20-%20Professor%20Catherine%20Heymans.pdf Herschel Medal - Professor Catherine Heymans (Short citation), date: 06/01/2022. 2023 Heino Falcke 2024 Roberta Humphreys Stellar astrophysics 2025 Ian Smail 2026 Andrew Bunker Studies of high redshift galaxies

See also

List of astronomy awards

References