| | 1 | Name: | Dr. Ronald D. Ekers | | | Institution: | CSIRO, Australia Telescope National Facility | | | Year Elected: | 2003 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 101. Astronomy | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1941 | | | | | | |
Professor Ron Ekers was appointed Foundation Director of CSIRO's Australia Telescope National Facility in 1988 and he continued in this role until March 2003, when he took up his Federation Fellowship. He graduated from the University of Adelaide in 1963 and gained his Ph.D. in astronomy at the Australian National University in 1967. His professional career has taken him to the California Institute of Technology, the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy in Cambridge, UK, the Kapteyn Laboratory in Groningen, The Netherlands, and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in New Mexico. He was director of the VLA, the major national radio telescope in the USA, from 1980 until 1987. He was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, a Foreign Member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Science and a Foreign Member of the American Philosophical Society. He is the president of the International Astronomical Union. Dr. Ekers's research interests include extragalactic astronomy, especially cosmology, galactic nuclei and radio astronomical techniques. | |
| 2 | Name: | Dr. Frank H. Shu | | | Institution: | National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan | | | Year Elected: | 2003 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 101. Astronomy | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1943 | | | Death Date: | April 22, 2023 | | | | | | |
In 2003 Frank Shu left his University Professor position at the University of California, Berkeley to become president of "Taiwan's MIT," National Tsing Hua University. In 2007, he returned to the University of California - this time UC San Diego. He initially made his reputation with the density wave theory of spiral arms in spiral galaxies (with C.C. Lin) and has developed a picture of how stars are formed in pressure waves in these gas clouds. His work on star formation today provides the basic framework guiding both theory and observation. More recently he has turned to the distribution of chondrules in meteorites to help understand the formation of planets from stellar disks. A particularly lucid lecturer, his text, The Physical Universe, is considered "the Feynman Lectures of astronomy." Dr. Shu was awarded the Shaw Prize in Astrophysics in 2009. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1987); the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (1992); the Academia Sinica; and the American Astronomical Society (president, 1994-96). | |
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