Public release date: 18-Jan-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Gareth Dant media.relations@durham.ac.uk 01-913-346-075 Durham University

Two rising young stars in the world of astronomy research have been awarded prestigious prizes by the Royal Astronomical Society. Durham University academics Dr Mark Swinbank and Dr Baojiu Li were awarded two of this year's 14 accolades the Fowler prize and Winton Capital award.

The prizes from the RAS, the UK's voice for professional astronomers and geophysicists, honour individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to their disciplines.

Professor Martin Ward, head of Durham University's Department of Physics, said: "It is a great honour for Durham Physics that two of our brightest young rising research stars have been given these prestigious awards, one in the area of observational astrophysics and the other in theoretical cosmology."

The Society's Fowler prizes are awarded to individuals who have made a particularly noteworthy contribution at an early stage of their research career.

Dr Mark Swinbank received the 2013 Fowler Award for astronomy for the drive and initiative he has shown in developing new techniques to determine the nature and evolutionary histories of high redshift galaxies seen as they were when the Universe was young. Dr Swinbank was awarded his PhD by Durham University in 2005 and since then has been highly productive, publishing 90 papers in high-impact refereed journals (18 as lead author).

His particular contribution has been to couple the new generation of integral field unit (IFU) spectrographs with adaptive optics and to take advantage of the natural magnification of distant galaxies resulting from gravitational lensing.

Dr Swinbank's work has provided some of the most detailed information yet obtained on the motion of and star formation properties of distant galaxies.

His world-leading contributions include determining the properties of galaxies at large distances (so far away that light we see from left between seven and 11.5 billion years ago), including their rotation and the distribution of their star forming regions.

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Durham University academics win prestigious astronomy prizes