Viktor Hambartsumyan International Prize 2010 in astronomy/astrophysics and related sciences goes to famous Swiss astrophysicist professor Michel Mayor and two of his team members Garik Israelian and Nuno Santos.
Viktor Hambartsumyan International Prize has been established by the President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan in 2009 and at present is one of the important awards in astronomy/astrophysics and related sciences. It is being awarded to outstanding scientists from any country and nationality having significant contribution in science. The Prize totals USD 500,000 and will be awarded once every two years, starting with 2010. By the way, let us mention that the President of the Armenian National Academy of Sciences Radik Martirosyan allotted this money not from the state budget but from other sources, which he didn’t publicize. The deadline for nominations was March 18, and the International Steering Committee chaired by Radik Martirosyan received nominations from national academies of sciences, universities, observatories, and Nobel Prize winners for 14 outstanding scientists and teams from different countries. After a thorough study of the nominated works, as well as independent referees’ reports, the Committee had several discussions and finally Prof. Michel Mayor and his team nominated by the Swiss Academy of Sciences were selected as winners. The Steering Committee members are Geoffrey R. Burbidge, Senior Editor of the Annual Reviews of Astronomy & Astrophysics, Scientific Editor of the Astrophysical Journal, University of California San Diego, Center for Astrophysics & Space Sciences (UCSD/CASS), Martin J. Rees, Prof. of Cosmology and Astrophysics and Master of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, Astronomer Royal, Catherine J. Cesarsky, Past President of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), Professor of Astrophysics, Former Director General of ESO, Yervant Terzian, Prof. of Physical Sciences, Director of NASA’s NY State Space Grant Program, Chairman of US Consortium on SKA and of ANSEF Research Council, Foreign Member of NAS RA, Co-President of ArAS, Norair H. Arakelyan, Academician-Secretary of the Division of Mathematical and Technical of NAS RA, Academician and Member of the Presidium of NAS RA; Doctor of Sciences, Professor, Director of Inst of Mathematics, Gennady S. Bisnovatyi-Kogan, Prof. of Astrophysics, Doctor of Science, Principal Research Associate at Space Research Institute (IKI), member of the Editorial Board of Astrofizika, Reinhard Genzel, Managing Director at the Max-Planck-Institut fur Extraterrestrische Physik (Garching, Germany), Scientific Member of the Max-Planck Society, Full Professor of the Univ. of California (Berkeley, CA, USA), Robert E. Williams, President of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), Prof. of Astrophysics, AURA Distinguished Research Scholar (SMO). Yesterday Marirosyan publicized the names of the winners of the prize. “By the establishment of this prize we mostly expect that the winners of all the years will show their support to Armenia.” According to Marirosyan the Steering Committee received nominations from national academies of sciences, universities, observatories, and Nobel Prize winners for 14 outstanding scientists and teams from different countries. After a thorough study of the nominated works, as well as independent referees’ reports, the Committee had several discussions and finally Prof. Michel Mayor and his team nominated by the Swiss Academy of Sciences were selected as winners. “This is the most significant result of astrophysics of the past 10-15 years,” mentioned the chair of the Academy of science of Armenia. Michel Mayor, professor at the Geneva University, is the co-discoverer of the first extra-solar planet orbiting a solar-type star. He is the principal investigator of an important survey carried in the southern hemisphere to search and characterize exo-planets. Still going on at La Silla Observatory (ESO, Chile) this survey has allowed the discovery of several planets with mass as small as a few Earth masses. Michel Mayor and his team members, nominated by the Swiss Academy of Sciences, have done outstanding contributions in the domain of planetary systems and their host stars. Despite the large number of discovered extra-solar planets, the formation of planetary systems is still far to be understood. The amazing diversity of these systems is challenging. On the last ten years, Mayor and his international team including members of the Astrophysical Institute of Canary Islands, IAC, (Garik Israelian) and Centra de Astrofisica da Universidade do Porto, CAUP, (Nuno Santos), have characterized the physical and chemical properties of stars with extra-solar planets. Small anomalies of spectra of stars hosting planets contribute to our understanding of the complexity of planetary formation mechanisms. The results obtained by that team had a strong impact on planet formation models. By the way Michel Mayor due to his immense scientific investment is one of the candidates of a Nobel Prize. According to the procedure, the prize should be delivered to the winner on September 18 on the birthday of Hambartsumyan personally by the Armenian President. On those days many famous scientists will be invited to Armenia from all over the world and the winners will make speeches regarding their scientific pieces. “Hambartsumyan was not only one of the greatest scientists of the 2oth century. And it’s no accident that by this prize the memory of the great scientist is commemorated in a proper manner. The greatest role of Hambartsumyan was that in the astrophysics he discovered and paid attention to the phenomena of instability among the stars, galaxies and other astronomic bodies. Prior to that nobody paid attention to these phenomena. Due to him a range of issues regarding the special body evolution were explored. Hambartsumyan also has a great role in theoretic astrophysics,” mentioned a famous French astrophysics scientist Jean-Claude Pecker regarding the immense work of Hambartsumyan. The French scientist back in the 60s used to work with Hambartsumyan. Back then the latter was the chair of the international astrophysics company and Pecker was the secretary of that company.