Bryan Gaensler
Two young Australian astronomers working in the U.S. have taken out two of the most prestigious awards of the American Astronomical Society.
Bryan Gaensler, a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of COSMOS, Australia's new popular science magazine, has been awarded the 2006 Newton Lacy Pierce Prize by the Society, the largest organisation of professional astronomers in North America.
Gaensler, an Australian working at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, received the prize for "his work on the interactions between neutron stars and their surroundings, which led to our appreciation of the wide diversity of magnetised neutron stars," including pulsars and a strange type of star called a magnetar.
The prize is given out annually for the best observational astronomer in North America under the age of 36.
"I have wanted to be an astronomer since I was three years old," he said. "It's a huge thrill to receive an award like the Pierce Prize, which recognises all the enthusiasm and hard work that I have put into pursuing this goal over the last thirty years."
He wrote about his experience in witnessing a giant magnetic flare coming off a magnetar in Issue 2 of COSMOS ("A star is burst", p10). In the article he said, "this little magnetar, so nearly ignored, gave off more energy in a mere 0.2 seconds than our own Sun does in about 200,000 years." The event set the astronomical world abuzz when it occurred in late December 2004.
Gaensler received a PhD in physics from the University of Sydney in 1998. He then held postdoctoral fellowships at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, before becoming an assistant professor in the Department of Astronomy at Harvard University. He will return to the University of Sydney later this year as a Federation Fellow.
Another young Australian working in the United States, Lisa Kewley of the University of Hawaii, has won one of the other major Society prizes, the Annie Jump Cannon Award for distinguished contributions to astronomy by a woman who received her PhD within the last five years. She won the award for her studies of oxygen in galaxies using the W. M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, the largest optical/infrared telescope in the world.
Born and raised in South Australia, Kewley received her PhD in 2002 from the Australian National University in Canberra and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy.
It is unprecedented for two of the seven major awards of the American Astronomical Society to be taken by Australians.
COSMOS is Australia's only popular science magazine. Published six times a year, it marries engaging, provocative articles by excellent writers with stunning photography and illustrations. It is available at newsagents and bookstores in Australia and New Zealand, and via subscription at www.cosmosmagazine.com.
Professor Bryan Gaensler is available for interview.
