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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 $750 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 2012 award,
the department head should send, in pdf format, the following materials to the chair
of the awards committee, Patrick Cote (Patrick.Cote at nrc-cnrc.gc.ca):
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a letter of recommendation in support of the candidate/thesis (maximum three pages)
- a copy of the thesis
- a copy of the report from the outside examiner of the thesis
Copies of all materials should also be sent to the CASCA business office:
casca at astro.queensu.ca.
The deadline for submission is January 15, 2012. Note that 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" |
| 2009 | Catherine Lovekin | St. Mary's University | " The Effects of Rotation and Overshoot on Stellar Pulsation Frequencies" |
| 2010 | Helen Kirk | University of Victoria | "Star Formation in the Perseus Molecular Cloud" |
| 2011 | Kaitlin Kratter | University of Toronto | "The Role of Disks in the Formation of Stellar Systems" |
[ Back to the Awards Page ]
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