Shaw Prize for Astronomy: Winners by Year

Award years

• 2026

  • Ken'ichi Nomoto, Stanford Woosley

    For their studies of stellar explosions and the origin of the elements.

• 2025

  • George Efstathiou, John Richard Bond

    For their pioneering research in cosmology, in particular for their studies of fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background. Their predictions have been verified by an armada of ground-, balloon- and space-based instruments, leading to precise determinations of the age, geometry, and mass-energy content of the universe.

• 2024

  • Shrinivas R. Kulkarni

    For his ground-breaking discoveries about millisecond pulsars, gamma-ray bursts, supernovae, and other variable or transient astronomical objects

• 2023

  • Duncan Lorimer, Matthew Bailes, Maura McLaughlin

    For the discovery of fast radio bursts (FRBs).

• 2022

  • Lennart Lindegren, Michael Perryman

    For their lifetime contributions to space astrometry, and in particular for their role in the conception and design of the European Space Agency 's Hipparcos and Gaia missions.

• 2021

  • Chryssa Kouveliotou, Victoria M. Kaspi

    For their contributions to our understanding of magnetars, a class of highly magnetized neutron stars that are linked to a wide range of spectacular, transient astrophysical phenomena. Through the development of new and precise observational techniques, they confirmed the existence of neutron stars with ultra-strong magnetic fields and characterized their physical properties. Their work has established magnetars as a new and important class of astrophysical objects.

• 2020

  • Roger Blandford

    For his foundational contributions to theoretical astrophysics, especially concerning the fundamental understanding of active galactic nuclei, the formation and collimation of relativistic jets, the energy extraction mechanism from black holes, and the acceleration of particles in shocks and their relevant radiation mechanisms.

• 2019

  • Edward C. Stone

    For his leadership in the Voyager project, which has, over the past four decades, transformed our understanding of the four giant planets and the outer Solar System, and has now begun to explore interstellar space.

• 2018

  • Jean-Loup Puget

    For his contributions to astronomy in the infrared to submillimetre spectral range. He detected the cosmic far-infrared background from past star-forming galaxies, and proposed aromatic hydrocarbon molecules as a constituent of interstellar matter. With the Planck space mission, he has dramatically advanced our knowledge of cosmology in the presence of interstellar matter foregrounds.

• 2017

  • Simon D. M. White

    For his contributions to understanding structure formation in the Universe. With powerful numerical simulations he has shown how small density fluctuations in the early Universe develop into galaxies and other nonlinear structures, strongly supporting a cosmology with a flat geometry, and dominated by dark matter and a cosmological constant.

• 2016

  • Kip S. Thorne, Rainer Weiss, Ronald Drever

    For conceiving and designing the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), whose recent direct detection of gravitational waves opens a new window in astronomy, with the first remarkable discovery being the merger of a pair of stellar mass black holes.

• 2015

  • William J. Borucki

    For his conceiving and leading the Kepler Mission, which greatly advanced knowledge of both extrasolar planetary systems and stellar interiors.

• 2014

  • Daniel Eisenstein, John A. Peacock, Shaun Cole

    For their contributions to the measurements of features in the large-scale structure of galaxies used to constrain the cosmological model including baryon acoustic oscillations and redshift-space distortions.

• 2013

  • John F. Hawley, Steven A. Balbus

    For their discovery and study of the magnetorotational instability, and for demonstrating that this instability leads to turbulence and is a viable mechanism for angular momentum transport in astrophysical accretion disks.

• 2012

  • David Jewitt, Jane Luu

    For their discovery and characterization of trans-Neptunian bodies, an archeological treasure dating back to the formation of the Solar System and the long-sought source of short period comets.

• 2011

  • Enrico Costa, Gerald J. Fishman

    For their leadership of space missions that enabled the demonstration of the cosmological origin of gamma ray bursts, the brightest sources known in the universe.

• 2010

  • Charles L. Bennett, David N. Spergel, Lyman Page

    For their leadership of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) experiment, which has enabled precise determinations of the fundamental cosmological parameters, including the geometry, age and composition of the universe.

• 2009

  • Frank H. Shu (徐遐生)

    In recognition of his outstanding life-time contributions in theoretical astronomy.

• 2008

  • Reinhard Genzel

    In recognition of his outstanding contributions in demonstrating that the Milky Way contains a supermassive black hole at its centre.

• 2007

  • Peter Goldreich

    In recognition of his lifetime achievements in theoretical astrophysics and planetary sciences.

• 2006

  • Adam G. Riess, Brian P. Schmidt, Saul Perlmutter

    For discovering that the expansion rate of the universe is accelerating, implying in the simplest interpretation that the energy density of space is non-vanishing even in the absence of any matter and radiation.

• 2005

  • Geoffrey Marcy, Michel Mayor

    For finding and characterizing the orbits and masses of the first planets around other stars, thereby revolutionizing our understanding of the processes that form planets and planetary systems.

• 2004

  • James Peebles

    For his groundbreaking contribution to cosmology. He laid the foundations for almost all modern investigations in cosmology, both theoretical and observational, transforming a highly speculative field into a precision science.