The Beatrice M. Tinsley Prize is awarded every other year by the

American Astronomical Society The American Astronomical Society (AAS, sometimes spoken as "double-A-S") is an American society of professional astronomers and other interested individuals, headquartered in Washington, DC. The primary objective of the AAS is to promote the adv ...

in recognition of an outstanding research contribution to

astronomy Astronomy () is a natural science that studies astronomical object, celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and chronology of the Universe, evolution. Objects of interest ...

astrophysics Astrophysics is a science that employs the methods and principles of physics and chemistry in the study of astronomical objects and phenomena. As one of the founders of the discipline said, Astrophysics "seeks to ascertain the nature of the h ...

of an exceptionally creative or innovative character. The prize is named in honor of the cosmologist and

astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, natural satellite, moons, comets and galaxy, g ...

Beatrice Tinsley. The prize is normally awarded every second year, but was awarded in 2021 out of the established sequence.

Recipients

Recipients of the Beatrice M. Tinsley Prize include: * 1986

Jocelyn Bell Burnell Dame Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell (; Bell; born 15 July 1943) is an astrophysicist from Northern Ireland who, as a postgraduate student, discovered the first radio pulsars in 1967. The discovery eventually earned the Nobel Prize in Physics in ...

— discovery of first

pulsar A pulsar (from ''pulsating radio source'') is a highly magnetized rotating neutron star that emits beams of electromagnetic radiation out of its magnetic poles. This radiation can be observed only when a beam of emission is pointing toward Ea ...

* 1988 Harold I. Ewen,

Edward M. Purcell Edward Mills Purcell (August 30, 1912 – March 7, 1997) was an American physicist who shared the 1952 Nobel Prize for Physics for his independent discovery (published 1946) of nuclear magnetic resonance in liquids and in solids. Nuclear magne ...

— discovery of 21 cm radiation from hydrogen * 1990

Antoine Labeyrie Antoine is a French given name (from the Latin ''Antonius'' meaning 'highly praise-worthy') that is a variant of Danton, Titouan, D'Anton and Antonin. The name is used in France, Switzerland, Belgium, Canada, West Greenland, Haiti, French Guiana, ...

— speckle interferometry * 1992

Robert H. Dicke Robert Henry Dicke (; May 6, 1916 – March 4, 1997) was an American astronomer and physicist who made important contributions to the fields of astrophysics, atomic physics, physical cosmology, cosmology and gravity. He was the Albert Einstein ...

— lock-in amplifier * 1994

Raymond Davis, Jr. Raymond Davis Jr. (October 14, 1914 – May 31, 2006) was an American chemist and physicist. He is best known as the leader of the Homestake experiment in the 1960s-1980s, which was the first experiment to detect neutrinos emitted from the Sun; f ...

— neutrino detectors; first measurement of solar neutrinos * 1996

Aleksander Wolszczan Aleksander Wolszczan (born 29 April 1946) is a Polish astronomer. He is the co-discoverer of the first confirmed extrasolar planets and pulsar planets. Early life and education Wolszczan was born on 29 April 1946 in Szczecinek located in pre ...

— first

pulsar planet Pulsar planets are planets that are found orbiting pulsars, or rapidly rotating neutron stars. The first such planets to be discovered were around a millisecond pulsar and were the first extrasolar planets to be confirmed as discovered. History ...

* 1998 Robert E. Williams —

astronomical spectroscopy Astronomical spectroscopy is the study of astronomy using the techniques of spectroscopy to measure the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation, including visible light, ultraviolet, X-ray, infrared and radio waves that radiate from stars and othe ...

, particularly in gas clouds * 2000

Charles R. Alcock Charles Roger Alcock (born 15 June 1951) is a British New Zealander astronomer. He was the director of the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian in Cambridge, Massachusetts from 2004–2022. Career Born in Windsor, Berkshire, England, ...

— search for

massive compact halo objects A massive astrophysical compact halo object (MACHO) is a kind of astronomical body that might explain the apparent presence of dark matter in galaxy halos. A MACHO is a body that emits little or no radiation and drifts through interstellar space ...

* 2002

Geoffrey Marcy Geoffrey William Marcy (born September 29, 1954) is an American astronomer. He was an early influence in the field of exoplanet detection, discovery, and characterization. Marcy was a professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berk ...

R. Paul Butler Robert Paul Butler (born 1960) is an astronomer and staff scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., who searches for extrasolar planets. he and his team have discovered over half of the planets found orbiting nea ...

Steven S. Vogt Steven Scott Vogt (born December 20, 1949) is an American astronomer of German descent whose main interest is the search for extrasolar planets. He is credited, along with R. Paul Butler, for discovering Gliese 581 g, the first potentially ha ...

— ultra-high-resolution Doppler spectroscopy; discovery of

extrasolar planets An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet outside the Solar System. The first possible evidence of an exoplanet was noted in 1917 but was not recognized as such. The first confirmation of detection occurred in 1992. A different planet, init ...

by radial velocity measurements * 2004 Ronald J. Reynolds — studies of the

interstellar medium In astronomy, the interstellar medium is the matter and radiation that exist in the space between the star systems in a galaxy. This matter includes gas in ionic, atomic, and molecular form, as well as dust and cosmic rays. It fills interstella ...

* 2006 John E. Carlstrom —

cosmic microwave background In Big Bang cosmology the cosmic microwave background (CMB, CMBR) is electromagnetic radiation that is a remnant from an early stage of the universe, also known as "relic radiation". The CMB is faint cosmic background radiation filling all spac ...

using the

Sunyaev–Zeldovich effect The Sunyaev–Zeldovich effect (named after Rashid Sunyaev and Yakov Zeldovich, Yakov B. Zeldovich and often abbreviated as the SZ effect) is the Cosmic microwave background spectral distortions , spectral distortion of the cosmic microwave back ...

* 2008

Mark Reid Mark Reid (born 15 September 1961) is a Scottish retired professional footballer who played as a left back. Reid made over 350 appearances in the Scottish and English Football Leagues between 1980 and 1993. Career Born in Kilwinning, Reid play ...

— astrometry experiments with the VLBI and the VLBA; pioneering use of cosmic masers as astronomical tools * 2010 Drake Deming — thermal infrared emission from

transiting extrasolar planets Any planet is an extremely faint light source compared to its parent star. For example, a star like the Sun is about a billion times as bright as the reflected light from any of the planets orbiting it. In addition to the intrinsic difficulty ...

* 2012 Ronald L. Gilliland — ultra-high signal-to-noise observations related to time-domain photometry * 2014

Chris Lintott Christopher John Lintott (born 26 November 1980) is a British astrophysicist, author and broadcaster. He is a Professor of Astrophysics in the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford. Lintott is involved in a number of popular scien ...

— engaging non-scientists in cutting edge research * 2016 Andrew Gould — gravitational microlensing * 2018

Julianne Dalcanton Julianne Dalcanton (born 1968) is an American astronomer, professor of astronomy, researcher and comet discoverer. Since September 2021 she is the director of the Simons Foundation Center for Computational Astrophysics. Career Julianne Dalcan ...

— low-surface-brightness galaxies;

Hubble Space Telescope The Hubble Space Telescope (often referred to as HST or Hubble) is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. It was not the first space telescope, but it is one of the largest and most versa ...

surveys * 2020

Krzysztof Stanek Krzysztof Stanek is an observational astrophysicist and Professor and University Distinguished Scholar at Ohio State University. He was named a University Distinguished Scholar in 2018. His research focus is on the explosive deaths of massive s ...

Christopher Kochanek Christopher Kochanek is an American astronomer. He works in the fields of cosmology, gravitational lensing, and supernovae. Kochanek currently is an Ohio Eminent Scholar at Ohio State University as well as an Elected Fellow of the American Associat ...

—

time-domain astronomy Time-domain astronomy is the study of how astronomical objects change with time. Though the study may be said to begin with Galileo's ''Letters on Sunspots'', the term now refers especially to variable objects beyond the Solar System. This may be d ...

; leadership in the

All Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae The All Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae (ASAS-SN) is an automated program to search for new supernovae and other astronomical transients, headed by astronomers from the Ohio State University, including Christopher Kochanek and Krzysztof Stanek. ...

(ASAS-SN) * 2021 Bill Paxton — MESA software for computational stellar astrophysics

References

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External links

Official website
at the American Astronomical Society website Astronomy prizes Awards established in 1986 American awards American Astronomical Society

Recipients

See also

References

External links