The George Darwin Lectureship is an award granted by the

Royal Astronomical Society (Whatever shines should be observed) , predecessor = , successor = , formation = , founder = , extinction = , merger = , merged = , type = NG ...

to a 'distinguished and eloquent speaker' on the subject of

Astronomy Astronomy () is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, nebulae, g ...

including

astrochemistry Astrochemistry is the study of the abundance and reactions of molecules in the Universe, and their interaction with radiation. The discipline is an overlap of astronomy and chemistry. The word "astrochemistry" may be applied to both the Solar Syst ...

, astrobiology and astroparticle physics. The award is named after the astronomer

George Darwin Sir George Howard Darwin, (9 July 1845 – 7 December 1912) was an English barrister and astronomer, the second son and fifth child of Charles Darwin and Emma Darwin. Biography George H. Darwin was born at Down House, Kent, the fifth chi ...

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 *2021: Filippo Fraternali *2020: Ofer Lahav *2019: Chris Done * 2018: Stephen J. Smartt: "Kilonovae and the birth of multi-messenger astronomy" * 2017 Catherine Heymans : ''Observing the Dark side of our Universe'' * 2016 Michael Kramer : Probing Einstein's Universe and its physics - the joy of being curious * 2015 Katherine Blundell : 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 Andrew Collier Cameron is a British astronomer specialising in the discovery and characterisation of exoplanets. He is a founding co-investigator of the WASP project and served as the head of the School of Physics and Astronomy of the Universit ...

: Winds, Tides and the Migration of Hot Jupiters * 2011 Michael Turner : Connecting quarks to the cosmos * 2010 Carlos Frenk : The Small-Scale Structure of the Universe * 2009

Neil Gehrels Cornelis A. "Neil" Gehrels (October 3, 1952 – February 6, 2017) was an American astrophysicist specializing in the field of gamma-ray astronomy. He was Chief of the Astroparticle Physics Laboratory at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GS ...

: SWIFT and its results * 2008 Alan Watson : The Birth of Cosmic Ray Astronomy on the Argentine Pampas * 2007

Reinhard Genzel Reinhard Genzel http://royalsociety.org/people/reinhard-genzel/ Professor Reinhard Genzel ForMemRS (; born 24 March 1952) is a German astrophysicist, co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, a professor at LMU and a ...

: 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 : The Elemental Universe * 2003

Anneila Sargent Professor Anneila Isabel Sargent FRSE DSc (born Anneila Cassells, 1942, Kirkcaldy) is a Scottish–American astronomer who specializes in star formation. Biography Sargent was brought up in Burntisland, Fife, and schooled at Burntisland ...

: The Formation of Planetary Systems * 2002

Ramesh Narayan Ramesh Narayan (born 3 November 1959) is an Indian classical vocalist, composer and music producer who works predominantly in Malayalam cinema. He belongs to the Mewati gharana of Hindustani classical music. Narayan began his initial traini ...

: Evidence for the Black Hole Event Horizon * 2001 Wendy Freedman : The Expansion Rate of the Universe * 2000

Kip Thorne Kip Stephen Thorne (born June 1, 1940) is an American theoretical physicist known for his contributions in gravitational physics and astrophysics. A longtime friend and colleague of Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan, he was the Richard P. F ...

: Gravitational Waves: Opening a New Window onto the Universe. * 1999

Geoff 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, Berke ...

: Extrasolar Planets * 1998 Michael Perryman : A Stereoscopic View of the Galaxy * 1997

Simon White Simon David Manton White (born 30 September 1951), FRS, is a British astrophysicist. He was one of directors at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics before his retirement in late 2019. Life White studied Mathematics at Jesus College, C ...

: The Formation of Galaxies * 1996

Andrew Fabian Andrew Christopher Fabian (born 20 February 1948) is a British astronomer and astrophysicist. He was Director of the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge from 2013 to 2018. He was a Royal Society Research Professor at the Institu ...

: Broad Iron Lines from AGN: Test of Strong Gravity * 1995

Bohdan Paczyński Bohdan Paczyński or Bohdan Paczynski (8 February 1940 – 19 April 2007) was a Polish astronomer notable in the theory of the stellar evolution, accretion discs, and gamma ray bursts. Life Paczyński was born on 8 February 1940 in Vilnius, L ...

: Gravitational micro-lensing and the search for dark matter * 1994 Scott Tremaine : Is the Solar System Stable? * 1993

Riccardo Giacconi Riccardo Giacconi ( , ; October 6, 1931 – December 9, 2018) was an Italian-American Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist who laid down the foundations of X-ray astronomy. He was a professor at the Johns Hopkins University. Biography Born in ...

: Recent observations from the Hubble Space Telescope * 1992 John Barrow : Unprincipled Cosmology * 1991

Sandra Faber Sandra Moore Faber (born December 28, 1944) is an American astrophysicist known for her research on the evolution of galaxies. She is the University Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and works ...

: How galaxies (probably) formed * 1990 Andre Maeder : Massive Stars in Galaxies * 1989

Roger Blandford Roger David Blandford, FRS, FRAS (born 1949) is a British theoretical astrophysicist, best known for his work on black holes. Early life Blandford was born in Grantham, England and grew up in Birmingham. Career Blandford is famous in the as ...

: Gravitational Lenses * 1988

Roger Tayler Professor Roger John Tayler OBE FRS (25 October 1929 – 23 January 1997) was a British astronomer. Tayler made important contributions to stellar structure and evolution, plasma stability, nucleogenesis and cosmology. He wrote a number of ...

: The Sun as a Star * 1987 Wal Sargent : 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 Icko Iben, Jr. (born June 27, 1931) is an American astronomer and a Distinguished Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received his PhD from the University of Illinois in 1958 with thesis ''Higher order effects in beta de ...

: The life of an intermediate mass star - in isolation/in a close binary

References

{{Royal Astronomical Society Astronomy prizes Royal Astronomical Society

George Darwin Lecturers

See also

References