The Plaskett Medal

 

The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and the Canadian Astronomical Society have established an award entitled The Plaskett Medal in recognition of the pivotal role played by John Stanley Plaskett in the establishment of astrophysical research in Canada. The award, consisting of a gold medal, is to be made annually to the Ph.D. graduate from a Canadian university who is judged to have submitted the most outstanding doctoral thesis in astronomy or astrophysics in the preceding two calendar years. The recipient is invited to address one or the other of the sponsoring Societies (at his or her choice) at their Annual Meetings, and his or her expenses to attend the meeting are covered by that Society. The recipient will also receive a $600 honorarium.

At most one candidate may be nominated by the head of his/her department from among the graduates of that university. The candidate need not have carried out his/her work in an astronomy or physics department. For consideration for the 2009 award, the department head should submit four copies of a letter of recommendation, not more than three pages in length, four copies of the report of the outside examiner of the thesis, as well as four copies of the nominee's thesis to CASCA, Dept. of Physics, Engineering Physics, & Astronomy, Queen's University, Kingston, ON, K7L 3N6, prior to January 15, 2009. The copies of the thesis should be printed on two sides, and bound in some way, for example in a three-ring or report binder. If the thesis does not clearly indicate how much of its content represents the original work and ideas of the author, the department head should address this point in the letter. No other material should be submitted.

Note that the phrase "in the two preceding calendar years" in the eligibility rules makes it possible to re-nominate a candidate for whom an unsuccessful nomination was made in the preceding year. Because none of the documentation of previous nominations is retained for the use of the current selection committee, all re-nominations should be submitted with full documentation.

Recipients to date have been:

1988	Richard O. Gray	University of Toronto
1989	Peter Leonard	University of Toronto
1990	Pierre Bergeron	Université de Montréal
1991	Paul Charbonneau	Université de Montréal
1992	Eric Poisson	University of Alberta
1993	Pierre Brassard	Université de Montréal
1994	Grant M. Hill	University of Western Ontario
1995	Michael Richer	York University
1996	Gordon Squires	University of Toronto
1997	Alain Beauchamp	Université de Montréal
1998	Dean E. McLaughlin	McMaster University
1999	Stéphane Charpinet	Université de Montréal
2000	Alexei Razoumov	University of British Columbia
2001	Peter Brown	University of Western Ontario
2002	Edward Thommes	Queen's University
2003	Tracy Webb	University of Toronto
2004	Jo-Anne Brown	University of Calgary	"The Magnetic Field of the Outer Galaxy"
2005	Christian Marois	Université de Montréal	"Direct Exoplanet Imaging around Sun-like Stars: Beating the Speckle Noise with Innovative Imaging Techniques"
2006	Lauren MacArthur	University of British Columbia	"Stellar Populations in Spiral Galaxies"
2007	Frédéric Grandmont	Université Laval	"Développement d'un spectromètre imageur à transformée de Fourier pour l'astronomie"
2008	Adam Muzzin	University of Toronto	" Clusters of Galaxies in the Near to Mid-Infrared"

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