| | 1 | Name: | Dr. Ewine van Dishoeck | | | Institution: | Leiden Observatory, Leiden University; International Astronomical Union | | | Year Elected: | 2020 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 101. Astronomy | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1955 | | | | | | |
Ewine van Dishoeck is professor of molecular astrophysics at Leiden University, the Netherlands. Graduated from Leiden in 1984, she held positions at Harvard, Princeton and Caltech before returning to Leiden in 1990. The work of her group innovatively combines the world of chemistry with that of physics and astronomy to study the molecular trail from star-forming clouds to planet-forming disks. She has mentored several dozens of students and postdocs and has been heavily involved in planning of new observational facilities such as the Herschel Space Observatory and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array. Her awards include the 2000 Dutch Spinoza Prize, the highest scientific honor in the Netherlands, the 2015 Albert Einstein World Award of Science, the 2018 James Craig Watson Medal of the National Academy of Sciences, and the 2018 Kavli Prize for Astrophysics. She is a Member or Foreign Associate of several academies, including that of the Netherlands, USA, Germany and Norway. Since 2007, she is the scientific director of the Netherlands Research School for Astronomy
(NOVA). From 2018-2021, van Dishoeck serves as the president of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the worldwide organization of professional astronomers. van Dishoeck has a passion for outreach to the general public and a special interest in art and astronomy. In 2019, she co-curated an exhibition on Cosmos: Art & Knowledge.
Ewine van Dishoeck was elected an international member of the American Philosophical Society in 2020. | |
| 2 | Name: | Dr. James M. Moran | | | Institution: | Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Harvard University | | | Year Elected: | 2020 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 101. Astronomy | | | Residency: | resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1943 | | | | | | |
James Moran is currently Senior Scientist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and Donald H. Menzel Emeritus Professor of Astrophysics at Harvard University. He earned his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1968. He has spent most of his career at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and Harvard University.
James Moran has led a decades long program which has directly established the geometric scale of the universe and provided the first direct evidence for the existence of supermassive black holes. These exquisite observations began with Moran’s 1967 pioneering work in the development of Very Long Baseline spectral line interferometry and culminated with his observations of cosmic H2O maser sources to obtain the direct geometric distance to a galaxy, independent of traditional multiple step extragalactic distance ladder and its uncertain metallicity corrections. The extragalactic distance scale is a key ingredient in establishing the equation state of dark matter as well as being an essential prerequisite for the determination of the age, energy density, synthesis of the light elements, geometry, and the evolution of the universe. The current “tension” between the maser/Cepheid/supernova and Planck values of the Hubble constant, 73.24p/m1.74 and 67.8p/m0.9 respectively, depends fundamentally on these direct geometric measurements.
James Moran was awarded the Rumford Prize of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1971, the Newton Lacy Pierce Prize of the American Astronomical Society in 1978, and the Grote Reber Gold Medal in 2013. He is a member of the International Astronomical Union (president, Division X and Commission 40, 1997-2000), the National Academy of Sciences (1998), and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2010). James Moran was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2020. | |
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