A magnetar is a type of neutron star with an extremely powerful magnetic field (~109 to 1011 T, ~1013 to 1015 G). The magnetic-field decay powers the emission of high-energy electromagnetic radiation, particularly X-rays and gamma rays.
Robert C. Duncan (Jr.) is an American astrophysicist now retired from the University of Texas at Austin.
John Norris Bahcall was an American astrophysicist and the Richard Black Professor for Astrophysics at the Institute for Advanced Study. He was known for a wide range of contributions to solar, galactic and extragalactic astrophysics, including the solar neutrino problem, the development of the Hubble Space Telescope and for his leadership and development of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
Anomalous X-ray pulsars (AXPs) are an observational manifestation of magnetars—young, isolated, highly magnetized neutron stars. These energetic X-ray pulsars are characterized by slow rotation periods of ~2–12 seconds and large magnetic fields of ~1013–1015 gauss (1 to 100 gigateslas). As of 2017, there were 12 confirmed and 2 candidate AXPs known. The identification of AXPs with magnetars was motivated by their similarity to soft gamma repeaters.
The Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics is jointly awarded each year by the American Astronomical Society and American Institute of Physics for outstanding work in astrophysics. It is funded by the Heineman Foundation in honour of Dannie Heineman.
The Bruno Rossi Prize is awarded annually by the High Energy Astrophysics division of the American Astronomical Society "for a significant contribution to High Energy Astrophysics, with particular emphasis on recent, original work". Named after astrophysicist Bruno Rossi, the prize is awarded with a certificate and a gift of USD $500, and was first awarded in 1985 to William R. Forman and Christine Jones Forman "for pioneering work in the study of X-ray emission from early type galaxies". It has been awarded 32 times. In 2010, the prize was awarded to William B. Atwood, Peter Michelson and the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope team "for enabling, through the development of the Large Area Telescope, new insights into neutron stars, supernova remnants, cosmic rays, binary systems, active galactic nuclei, and gamma-ray bursts". In 2013, the prize was awarded to Roger W. Romani of Leland Stanford Junior University and Alice Harding of Goddard Space Flight Center for their work in developing the theoretical framework underpinning the many exciting pulsar results from Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.
Jean Hebb Swank is an astrophysicist who is best known for her studies of black holes and neutron stars.
Feryal Özel is a Turkish-American astrophysicist born in Istanbul, Turkey, specializing in the physics of compact objects and high energy astrophysical phenomena. As of 2022, Özel is the Department Chair and a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology School of Physics in Atlanta. She was previously a professor at the University of Arizona in Tucson, in the Astronomy Department and Steward Observatory.
Wendy Laurel Freedman is a Canadian-American astronomer, best known for her measurement of the Hubble constant, and as director of the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, California, and Las Campanas, Chile. She is now the John & Marion Sullivan University Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago. Her principal research interests are in observational cosmology, focusing on measuring both the current and past expansion rates of the universe, and on characterizing the nature of dark energy.
Lars Bildsten is an American astrophysicist, best known for his work on the physics of white dwarfs and their explosions as Type Ia supernovae. He is the sixth director of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) and a professor in the UCSB Physics Department.
Neta Bahcall is an Israeli astrophysicist and cosmologist specializing in dark matter, the structure of the universe, quasars, and the formation of galaxies. Bahcall is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Astronomy at Princeton University.
Marc Kamionkowski is an American theoretical physicist and currently the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University. His research interests include particle physics, dark matter, inflation, the cosmic microwave background and gravitational waves.
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.
Johannes A. van Paradijs was a Dutch high-energy astrophysicist. He is best known for discovering the first optical afterglow of a gamma-ray burst, GRB 970228, in February 1997, together with two of his students, and for establishing that gamma-ray bursts are extragalactic events. He was married to the astrophysicist Chryssa Kouveliotou.
Alice Kust Harding is an American astrophysicist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland.
Rita M. Sambruna Commander OMRI (Hon) is an Italian-American astrophysicist and is the Deputy Director of the Astrophysics Science Division at National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Center. From September 2022 to May 2023, she was the Acting Deputy Director of the Science Exploration Directorate at Goddard. Rita held the Clare Boothe Luce Professorship in Physics and Astronomy at George Mason University in 2000-2005.
Filippo Frontera is an Italian astrophysicist and professor, who deals with astronomical investigations on celestial gamma-rays.
Christopher Thompson is a Canadian astronomer and astrophysicist. He is a professor of astronomy at the University of Toronto Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA).
Giuseppe Cesare Perola was an Italian astrophysicist who has made significant contributions to the study of extragalactic radio astronomy, radiogalaxies, active galactic nuclei, and the growth of supermassive black holes. He began his scientific career at the University of Milan in 1965, working in the group led by Giuseppe Occhialini and Connie Dilworth.
