The American Astronomical Society is an American society of professional astronomers and other interested individuals, headquartered in Washington, DC. The primary objective of the AAS is to promote the advancement of astronomy and closely related branches of science, while the secondary purpose includes enhancing astronomy education and providing a political voice for its members through lobbying and grassroots activities. Its current mission is to enhance and share humanity's scientific understanding of the universe as a diverse and inclusive astronomical community.
Annie Jump Cannon was an American astronomer whose cataloging work was instrumental in the development of contemporary stellar classification. With Edward C. Pickering, she is credited with the creation of the Harvard Classification Scheme, which was the first serious attempt to organize and classify stars based on their temperatures and spectral types. She was nearly deaf throughout her career after 1893, as a result of scarlet fever. She was a suffragist and a member of the National Women's Party.
Vera Florence Cooper Rubin was an American astronomer who pioneered work on galaxy rotation rates. She uncovered the discrepancy between the predicted and observed angular motion of galaxies by studying galactic rotation curves. These results were later confirmed over subsequent decades. Her work on the galaxy rotation problem was cited by others as evidence for the existence of dark matter. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile is named in her honor.
Eleanor Margaret Burbidge, FRS (née Peachey; 12 August 1919 – 5 April 2020) was a British-American observational astronomer and astrophysicist. In the 1950s, she was one of the founders of stellar nucleosynthesis and was first author of the influential B2FH paper. During the 1960s and 1970s she worked on galaxy rotation curves and quasars, discovering the most distant astronomical object then known. In the 1980s and 1990s she helped develop and utilise the Faint Object Spectrograph on the Hubble Space Telescope. Burbidge was also well known for her work opposing discrimination against women in astronomy.
The Helen B. Warner Prize for Astronomy is awarded annually by the American Astronomical Society to a young astronomer for a significant contribution to observational or theoretical astronomy.
Geoffrey Ronald Burbidge (24 September 1925 – 26 January 2010) was an English astronomy professor and theoretical astrophysicist, most recently at the University of California, San Diego. He was married to astrophysicist Margaret Burbidge and was the second author of the influential B2FH paper which she led.
The Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society is the highest award given by the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS). The RAS Council have "complete freedom as to the grounds on which it is awarded" and it can be awarded for any reason. Past awards have been given for "outstanding personal researches in the fields of astronomy and geophysics" as well as general contributions to astronomy and geophysics "that may be made through leadership in research programmes, through education and through scientific administration". It has been awarded both for research that has taken a lifetime, and for specific pieces of research.
Paula Szkody is a professor in the Department of Astronomy at the University of Washington in Seattle. She served as president of the American Astronomical Society from 2020 to 2022.
Lisa Jennifer Kewley is an Australian Astrophysicist and current Director of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. Previously, Kewley was Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3-D and ARC Laureate Fellow at the Australian National University College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, where she was also a Professor. Specialising in galaxy evolution, she won the Annie Jump Cannon Award in Astronomy in 2005 for her studies of oxygen in galaxies, and the Newton Lacy Pierce Prize in Astronomy in 2008. In 2014 she was elected a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. In 2020 she received the James Craig Watson Medal. In 2021 she was elected as an international member of the National Academy of Sciences. In 2022 she became the first female director of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian.
Ida Barney was an American astronomer, best known for her 22 volumes of astrometric measurements on 150,000 stars. She was educated at Smith College and Yale University and spent most of her career at the Yale University Observatory. She was the 1952 recipient of the Annie J. Cannon Award in Astronomy.
Claudia Megan Urry is an American astrophysicist, who has served as the President of the American Astronomical Society, as chair of the Department of Physics at Yale University, and as part of the Hubble Space Telescope faculty. She is currently the Israel Munson Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Yale University and Director of the Yale Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics. Urry is notable not only for her contributions to astronomy and astrophysics, including work on black holes and multiwavelength surveys, but also for her work addressing sexism and sex equality in astronomy, science, and academia more generally.
Helen Dodson Prince was an American astronomer who pioneered work in solar flares at the University of Michigan.
Emily Levesque is an American astronomer, author, and associate professor in the Department of Astronomy at the University of Washington. She is renowned for her work on massive stars and using these stars to investigate galaxy formation. She is also the author of three books, including the 2020 popular science book The Last Stargazers: The Enduring Story of Astronomy's Vanishing Explorers.
Smadar Naoz is an Israeli-American astrophysicist, and was the 2015 winner of the Annie Jump Cannon Award in Astronomy for her scientific contributions to the fields of cosmology and planetary dynamics.
Vassiliki Kalogera is a Greek astrophysicist. She is a professor at Northwestern University and the director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA). She is a leading member of the LIGO Collaboration that observed gravitational waves in 2015.
Elizabeth Lada is an American astronomer whose self-described research interests include "understanding the origin, properties, evolution and fate of young embedded clusters within molecular clouds".
Stefi Baum is an American astronomer. The American Astronomical Society honored her work by awarding her the Annie J. Cannon Prize in 1993. Baum helped to develop the Hubble Space Telescope and, starting in 2004, was the director of Rochester Institute of Technology’s Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science.
Rebekah Dawson is an American astrophysicist and a former associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University. Her research focuses on simulating the evolution of exoplanetary orbits and compositions to better understand how planetary systems form.
Laura Kreidberg is an American astronomer who primarily studies exoplanets. Since 2020, she has been director at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Heidelberg, where she is leading the Atmospheric Physics of Exoplanets (APEx) department. She is MPIA's managing director as of January 2024.