The NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal (abbreviated ESAM) was established by NASA on September 15, 1961, when the original ESM was divided into three separate awards. Under the current guidelines, the ESAM is awarded for unusually significant scientific contribution toward achievement of aeronautical or space exploration goals. This award may be given for individual efforts that have resulted in a contribution of fundamental importance in this field, or have significantly enhanced understanding of this field.

Recipients (incomplete list)

* 1962 –

Robert E. Bourdeau Robert Eugene Bourdeau (February 1, 1922March 5, 2010) was an American physicist known for major contributions to the study of the ionosphere, plasma physics and radio science using space vehicles including satellites and rockets. Among his many ...

* 1963 – John Houbolt * 1965 –

Jack N. James Jack Norval James (November 22, 1920 – August 7, 2001) was a US rocket engineer who worked for over 35 years at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, USA. His work as a Project Manager for NASA's Mariner program in the 1960s in ...

* 1966 – Richard Franz Joseph Arenstorf (He was awarded the medal for his contributions to the Space Navigation and the Apollo Lunar Landing Program. * 1968 – G. Mervin Ault * 1969 – Charles Berry, William F. Brown, Thomas Canning, Moustafa Chahine,

Hong-Yee Chiu Hong-Yee Chiu (; born October 1932) is a Taiwanise-American astrophysicist, at NASA for 35 years, and successful publisher of EHGBooks micro-publishing company. He was born in Shanghai, China. Career Chiu graduated from National Taiwan Univers ...

, Clarence Cone, James Downey, Erwin Fehlberg, Richard Green, Rudolf Hanel, Webb Haymaker,

Gerhard B. Heller Gerhard B. Heller (January 24, 1914 - October 1, 1972) was a German-American rocket scientist and member of the " von Braun rocket team." He worked at Peenemünde Army Research Center during World War II and later, through Operation Paperclip, mo ...

, Harvey Hubbard, James Humphreys, Mark Kelly, James Kupperian, Dale Lumb, Wolfgang Moeckel, Paul Muller, Robert Naumann, William O'Bryant, George Pieper, Henry Plotkin, Joseph Randall, Donald Rea, Nancy Roman, Lee Scherer, William Sjorgen, Charles Sonett, Robert Stone, David Wark, Richard Whitcomb, Donald Wise * 1970 – William Angele,

James R. Arnold James Richard Arnold (May 5, 1923 – January 6, 2012) was the Harold C. Urey Professor of Chemistry (emeritus), and a noted pioneer in the field of planetary and space chemistry at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD), wher ...

, Paul Coleman, Leverett Davis, Milner Eskew, Herbert Friedman, Paul Gast, Peter Macdoran, Warren Martin, Maurice Morin, Marcia Neugebauer, Edward Perkins, Edward Smith, Conway Snyder, Nelson Spencer, Patrick Thaddeus, Robert Walker, Gerald Wasserburg * 1971 – John C. Freche * 1972 – Robert Steinbacher, Thomas C. Duxbury, Charles H. Acton * 1973 – William A. Fischer, Founder & Sr. Scientist, EROS Space Program; Recipient of the US Distinguished Service Award & many others. onway B. Leovy* 1974 – John A. Simpson, William Edgar Thornton August F. Witt, Carolyn L. Huntoon * 1975 – Edward Purdy Ney * 1976 – Tito T. Serafini * 1977 �
Janos K. Lanyi
* 1978 – Elihu Boldt, Hale Bradt, Herbert Friedman, Gordon Garmire, Herbert Gursky,

Walter Lewin Walter Hendrik Gustav Lewin (born January 29, 1936) is a Dutch astrophysicist and retired professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lewin earned his doctorate in nuclear physics in 1965 at the Delft University of Technol ...

, Frank McDonald, Laurence Peterson, Alvin Seiff, Robert Tolson * 1979 – Milton Halem * 1980 –

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 ...

(2002 Nobel Laureate in Physics) * 1981 – Andrew Ingersoll, Talivaldis Spalvins * 1982 –

Mary Helen Johnston Mary Helen Johnston (born September 17, 1945), later also Mary Helen McCay, is an American scientist and former astronaut. Working with NASA as an engineer in the 1960s and '70s, Johnston aspired to be an astronaut; she unsuccessfully applied in ...

, Jeff Cuzzi, James V. Taranik * 1983 –

Joel S. Levine Joel S. Levine (born 1942) is an American planetary scientist, author, and research professor in applied science at the College of William & Mary, specializing in the atmospheres of the Moon, Earth, and Mars. He has worked as a senior research ...

* 1984 –

Donald B. Campbell Donald B. Campbell is an Australian-born astronomer and Professor of Astronomy at Cornell University. Prior to joining the Cornell faculty he was Director of the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico for seven years. Campbell's research work is in th ...

James R. Houck James Richard Houck (October 5, 1940 – September 18, 2015) was the Kenneth A. Wallace Professor of Astronomy at Cornell University. Houck pioneered infrared observational astronomy, designing detectors and spectrographs that were flown on sound ...

* 1985 –

Prem Chand Pandey Prem Chand Pandey is an Indian space scientist, planetary scientist, and academic in the fields of satellite oceanography, remote sensing, atmospheric science, the Antarctic and climate change, and also he is the founding director of the Nat ...

SAC SAC or Sac may refer to: Organizations Education * Santa Ana College, California, US * San Antonio College, Texas, US * St. Andrew's College, Aurora, Canada * Students' Administrative Council, University of Toronto, Canada * SISD Student Activiti ...

ISRO The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO; ) is the national space agency of India, headquartered in Bengaluru. It operates under the Department of Space (DOS) which is directly overseen by the Prime Minister of India, while the Chairman ...

NCAOR The National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research, (NCPOR) formerly known as the National Centre for Antarctic and Ocean Research (NCAOR) is an Indian research and development institution, situated in Vasco da Gama, Goa. It is an autonomous Instit ...

and IIT Kharagpur, India, Parviz Moin * 1986 – Jeff Cuzzi, Crofton B. Farmer, Frank J. Grunthaner, Taylor G. Wang * 1988 –

Nitza Margarita Cintrón Nitza Margarita Cintrón (born 1950) is a Puerto Rican scientist and Chief of Space Medicine and Health Care Systems Office at NASA's Johnson Space Center. Early years Cintrón was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, the capital city of the island. ...

Hal A. Weaver Harold Anthony "Hal" Weaver, Jr. (born 1953) is an American astronomer, known for his research into the composition of solar system bodies including comets and Kuiper belt objects. Weaver attended Duke University as an undergraduate, and obtain ...

, Michael J. Mumma * 1989 – Mario Molina (1995 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry),

Donald J. Kessler Donald J. Kessler (born 1940) is an American astrophysicist and former NASA scientist known for his studies regarding space debris. Early life and education Kessler grew up in Texas. He served in the US Army in the Air Defense Command. He at ...

, Inez Fung * 1990 – Charles M. Telesco, John W. Harvey,

Martin A. Pomerantz Martin Arthur Pomerantz (December 17, 1916 – October 26, 2008) was an American physicist who served as Director of the Bartol Research Institute and who had been a leader in developing Antarctic astronomy.Indermuehle, Balthasar T., Burton, Mich ...

* 1991 – Khairul B. M. Q. Zaman,

John C. Mather John Cromwell Mather (born August 7, 1946, Roanoke, Virginia) is an American astrophysicist, cosmologist and Nobel Prize in Physics laureate for his work on the Cosmic Background Explorer Satellite (COBE) with George Smoot. This work helped ...

(2006 Nobel Laureate in Physics), Manuel D. Salas, Roy W. Spencer, John Christy * 1992 – Charles L. Bennett, John C.Brandt, Edward S. Cheng,

Donald D. Clayton Donald Delbert Clayton (born March 18, 1935) is an American astrophysicist whose most visible achievement was the prediction from nucleosynthesis theory that supernovae are intensely radioactive. That earned Clayton the NASA Exceptional Scientifi ...

, Holland C. Ford, Edward J. Groth, Richard J. Harms, Sara E. Heap, Peter Jakobson, William H. Jefferys, Thomas Kelsall, Michaael D. King,

Tod R. Lauer Tod R. Lauer (born 1957) is an American astronomer on the research staff of the NSF NOIRLab. He was a member of the Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field and Planetary Camera team, and is a founding member of the Nuker Team. His research interests ...

, David S. Leckrone, F. Duccio Macchetto, Stephan S. Meyers, S. Harvey Moseley, Thomas L. Murdock, Michael J. Prather, Richard A. Shafer, Robert F. Silverberg, Wei-kuo Tao, James A. Westphal, Ray J. Weymann, Edward L. Wright, James A. DiCarlo, Nathan S. Jacobson, George Smoot (2006 Nobel Laureate in Physics) * 1993 – Rebecca A. MacKay * 1994 – Robert A. Bindschadler, Theodore E. Bunch, Emmett W. Chappelle, Malcolm M. Cohen, Dale P. Cruikshank, Hay C. Hardin, Alice K. Harding, Donald Horan, Winifred M. Huo, Isabella T. Lewis, Erick Malaret, Camden McCarl, Robert Riesse, Piers J. Sellers, Trevor C. Sorensen, Thomas A. Zang Jr. * 1995 – James L. Smialek,

Maria T. Zuber Maria T. Zuber (born June 27, 1958) is an American geophysicist who is the vice president for research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she also holds the position of the E. A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics in the Department ...

Robert D. Moser Robert D. Moser is an American Professor of engineering, noted for his studies of spectral methods, turbulence, and uncertainty quantification. He is the W. A. “Tex” Moncrief Jr. Chair in Computational Engineering and Sciences and is profes ...

* 1996 – Kevin Zahnle, Carolyn Shoemaker,

Eugene Merle Shoemaker Eugene Merle Shoemaker (April 28, 1928 – July 18, 1997) was an American geologist. He co-discovered Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 with his wife Carolyn S. Shoemaker and David H. Levy. This comet hit Jupiter in July 1994: the impact was televise ...

* 1997 – James O. Arnold, David H. Atkinson, David H. Bailey, John E. Carlstrom, Ara Chutjian, John W. Connell, Harald M. Fischer, Everett K. Gibson Jr., William L. Grose, Marshall K. Joy, Kathie L. Thomas-Keprta, Louis J. Lanzerotti, David S. McKay, Michael J. Mumma, Hasso B. Niemann, Glenn S. Orton, Peter A. Pilewskie, Carolyn Purvis, Boris Ragent, Alvin Seiff, Lawrence Sromovsky, Ulf von Zahn, Richard N. Zare * 1998 – Narottam P. Bansal, Timothy J. Lee * 1999 – Jeff Cuzzi, Martin Weisskopf * 2000 – Hugh J. Christian Jr., Joan Feynman, Mona J. Hagyard, Yoram J. Kaufman, Ellis E. Remsberg * 2002 – Thomas P. Charlock, Gilles Peltzer * 2003 – Philip R. Christensen, Jean O. Dickey,

Geoffrey W. 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 ...

, Martin G. Mlynczak, Ronald L. Moore, Richard F. Mushotzky,

Eric Rignot Eric J. Rignot is a chancellor professor of Earth system science at the University of California, Irvine, and senior research scientist for the Radar Science and Engineering Section at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Education In 1985, Rigno ...

, Farid Salama, Wei-Kuo Tao * 2004 – Charles L. Bennett, Randall G. Hulet, David P. Kratz, Steven J. Ostro, Thomas L. Sever, Chris R. Webster, Yuk-ling Yung * 2005 – Ichiro Fukumori,

, Nicholas Leventis, Steven Suess, Michael Watkins * 2006 – Michael F. A’Hearn, David Charbonneau, Drake Deming, Neil Gehrels, John Le Marshall, Edward C. Stone, Tod Strohmayer, Larry W. Thomason * 2007 – Scott Braun,

Donald Brownlee Donald Eugene Brownlee (born December 21, 1943) is a professor of astronomy at the University of Washington at Seattle and the principal investigator for NASA's Stardust mission. In 2000, along with his co-author Peter Ward, he co-originated the ...

Joan Centrella Joan Mary Centrella is an American astrophysics, astrophysicist known for her research on computer simulations of general relativity, gravity waves, gravitational lenses, and binary black holes. She is the former deputy director of the Astrophysic ...

, Moustafa Chahine, Mark S. Marley, Eric Rignot, Alan Title * 2008 – Anthony Del Genio, David G. Fischer, Gerald M. Heymsfield, Russell A. Howard, Ronald Kwok, Michael I. Mishchenko, Son V. Nghiem * 2009 – James E. Fesmire, Gilles Peltzer, Michael J. Mumma,

Anne R. Douglass Anne Ritger Douglass is atmospheric physicist known for her research on chlorinated compounds and the ozone layer. Education and career Douglass graduated with a B.A.in physics from Trinity, now Trinity Washington University, in 1971. She then ...

* 2010 – Peter H. Smith, William V. Boynton, Heather L. Enos, Christopher R. Shinohara * 2011 – Carl J. Grillmair, Suzanne E. Smrekar, Yuhe T. Song, Timothy J. Lee, Eric Jensen, Jason Rowe, Jeff Scargle, Cheryl A. Nickerson * 2013 – David Paige * 2014 – Joshua Coleman, Daniel Huber * 2015 – Carrie M. Anderson * 2016 – David R. Ciardi, Amy R. Winebarger, Francesco Tombesi, Hiroya Yamaguchi * 2017 – Sylvain Guiriec, Maria Cristina De Sanctis, Samuel Gulkis, Thomas H. Prettyman,

Michele Vallisneri Michele Vallisneri (born July 15, 1973) is an Italian physicist, currently at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology and an Elected Fellow of the American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not ...

, Kasthuri J. Venkateswaran * 2018 – Susan E. Mullally, Michael B. Stenger, Lazaros Oreopoulos, M. Cristina De Sanctis, Walter A. Petersen, Michael Russell * 2019 – John D. Bolten, Carl R. Devore, Alex Glocer, Jonathan H. Jiang, Erin A. Kara, Fei Liu, Elizabeth A. MacDonald, Amy A. Simon, Lynn B. Wilson III, Cheol Park * 2020 – Renee C. Weber, Zaven Arzoumanian * 2021 – John Baross, Eli Dwek, Floyd William Stecker,

Eleonora Troja Eleonora Troja is an Italian astrophysicist. In 2017 she led the discovery of X-ray emission from the gravitational wave source GW170817. Education Troja completed a B.A. in physics and astronomy at University of Palermo in 2002. She comple ...

* 2022 – Zivi Lautman,

References

External links

List of NASA Honor Awards

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nasa Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal Awards and decorations of NASA Awards established in 1961

Recipients (incomplete list)

See also

References

External links