AAS Member Awarded 2016 Crafoord Prize

This post is adapted from a Crafoord Prize press release.

The Crafoord Prize is awarded annually to three top scientists from around the world for groundbreaking discoveries. This year, two laureates share the prize in astronomy and one is awarded the prize in mathematics. The prize amounts to 6 million SEK (approximately $718,000 USD) per prize, and the laureates in astronomy will share the prize equally.

The Crafoord Prize is one of the most prestigious scientific prizes in the world. The laureates of the 2016 Crafoord Prize in Astronomy, professor Roy Kerr, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, and professor Roger Blandford, Stanford University, California, USA, are awarded the prize "for fundamental work concerning rotating black holes and their astrophysical consequences." This year's laureate in mathematics, professor Yakov Eliashberg, also of Stanford University, is awarded the prize "for the development of contact and symplectic topology and groundbreaking discoveries of rigidity and flexibility phenomena."

AAS Member Roger Blandford, originally from Great Britain, has been studying black holes and explaining how the black holes can emit light so strongly. He has created and refined models of how gas surrounding a black hole flows towards it, is heated up, and transforms some of its gravitational energy to radiation. While this is happening, electrically charged particles are sent millions of kilometers into space in the form of powerful jets. The source of all of this power is the rotational energy of the massive black hole.

The laureates will present lectures in Lund, Sweden, on Tuesday, 24 May. The next day, symposia will be held in Stockholm in each prize category, to be followed on Thursday, 26 May, by a prize ceremony at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, where the laureates will receive their prizes from HM the King of Sweden.