Canadian Astronomical Society
2026 Carlyle S. Beals Award: Julio Navarro
CASCA is pleased to announce Dr. Julio F. Navarro as the recipient of the 2024 Carlyle S. Beals Award in recognition of outstanding achievement in research.
Dr. Navarro obtained his PhD from Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, in Argentina, and is currently a Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Victoria. As one of the leading cosmologists in Canada and the world, he has made many lasting impactful contributions to the field of computational cosmology, including landmark work on the intrinsic structure of dark matter halos. His work has proved essential to our understanding of the role of dark matter in the large-scale structure of the universe and in galaxy formation and evolution. Dr. Navarro’s contributions also include studies of dissipative effects on satellite galaxies, the collapse and shock-heating of non-radiative gas during the formation of galaxy clusters, and the formation and evolution of galactic disks. He was a pioneer of the “smoothed-particle hydrodynamics” (SPH) simulation technique, which remains the dominant tool allowing scientists to understand galaxy formation and evolution. Dr. Navarro has mentored numerous graduate students and postdoctoral researchers who have gone on to highly successful scientific careers.
CASCA is delighted to recognize Dr. Navarro’s achievements with this award.
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2022 Carlyle S. Beals Award: Anthony Moffat
CASCA is pleased to announce that Dr. Anthony Moffat is the winner of the 2022 Beals Award. This is in recognition of decades of cutting-edge research on topics relating to massive stars, including Wolf-Rayet stars, stellar pulsations, rotation, magnetic fields, clumping, binaries, clusters, and surveys. Many of us have used a Moffat profile: that was his work! He received his doctorates in astronomy from Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum in Germany, and has been a professor at Université de Montréal ever since, and hasn’t slowed his research output since taking emeritus status. He has trained generations of scientists who are still working in Canada and internationally. He remains very active in research on massive stars and astronomy projects like the BRITE constellation.
2020 Carlyle S. Beals Award: Howard Yee
CASCA is pleased to announce Dr. Howard K. C. Yee as the recipient of the 2020 Beals Award. Dr. Yee obtained his PhD from the California Institute of Technology, and is currently a Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Toronto. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and previously held a Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in Observational Cosmology. For almost three decades, Dr. Yee has been a leader of optical/infrared collaborations in Canada and internationally.
He spearheaded the Canadian Network for Observational Cosmology Surveys, and with his students, pioneered the Cluster Red-Sequence algorithm for galaxy cluster identification that has revolutionized the use of galaxy clusters as cosmological probes. Dr. Yee has additionally served in multiple leadership positions in the community, serving on various boards, steering committees, and time-allocation committees for the Canada France Hawaii Telescope and the Gemini Observatory, and has provided much of the early leadership for the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics Institute in Taiwan.
2018 Carlyle S. Beals Award: Mark Halpern
The 2018 Carlyle S. Beals Award is presented to Dr. Mark Halpern for his outstanding career contributions to the foundations of modern cosmology.
Dr. Halpern is currently Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of British Columbia. He has made many fundamental contributions to cosmological instrumentation and data analysis, and his work has been essential for making the measurements underpinning the Standard Model of Cosmology that is now the accepted framework for our current understanding of the Universe.
Over the course of his distinguished career, Dr. Halpern has been involved in a number of high-profile endeavours in the study of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). He made the first measurement of the dipole moment of the CMB at submillimeter wavelengths in the 1980s, he developed prototype bolometers for the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite experiment, and he was the only non-US member of the team that built the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). The WMAP team won the Gruber Prize in Cosmology in 2012 for determining the Universe’s vital statistics – age, geometry and origin. Dr. Halpern has been leading the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) which saw first light in Penticton, BC in September 2017. CHIME is set to make unprecedented measurements of Baryon Acoustic Oscillations in the distant Universe.
2016 Carlyle S. Beals Award: Chris Pritchet
CASCA is pleased to announce Dr. Chris Pritchet, from the University of Victoria, as the 2016 recipient of the Carlyle S. Beals Award.
Dr. Pritchet obtained his Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of Toronto in 1975. After holding positions at the University of British Columbia, the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory and the University of Calgary, Dr. Pritchet has been on faculty in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Victoria since 1982. He was Department Chair from 1995-1998, and the chair of the 2010-2020 Long Range Plan Committee for Canadian Astronomy. Dr. Pritchet is currently an associate fellow of the CIfAR Cosmology and Gravity program as well as the principal investigator of CANFAR, which coordinates astronomical computing resources across Canada.
Dr. Pritchet’s research in observational cosmology combines the best available technology with sophisticated analysis techniques. His discovery, along with Sidney van den Bergh, of RR Lyrae variable stars in the Andromeda galaxy is recognized as a vital contribution to fixing distance scales in the Local Group. He is a leader of the Supernova Legacy Survey that has provided precise measurements of dark matter and dark energy in the Universe, and he initiated the close galaxy pair study in the Canadian Network for Observational Cosmology redshift survey. He has also produced important results on galaxy mass profiles, globular cluster distributions, and stellar populations of galaxies in the local universe. Dr. Pritchet has mentored over three dozen graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, and has also made important contributions to astronomy education and outreach as a Galileo lecturer of the International Year of Astronomy and the initiator and primary organizer of Vict
oria’s Café Scientifique.
2014 Carlyle S. Beals Award: Harvey Richer
The Carlyle S. Beals Award is awarded biennially in recognition of outstanding achievement in research — either a specific achievement or a lifetime of research. CASCA is pleased to announce Prof. Harvey B. Richer, from the University of British Columbia, as the recipient of the 2014 Carlyle S. Beals Award.
Prof. Richer received his Ph.D. in 1970 from the University of Rochester, where he studied the physical properties of carbon stars under the supervision of Prof. Stuart Sharpless. Soon afterwards, he joined the faculty at the University of British Columbia where he has remained ever since. An internationally recognized expert on stellar populations in the Milky Way, star clusters and external galaxies, Prof. Richer was a pioneer in the study of globular clusters with CCDs, carrying out a number of landmark studies of these important stellar systems beginning with CFHT in the mid 1980s and continuing until the present day with the Hubble Space Telescope. Notable highlights from his more than 140 refereed publications include the discovery of young globular clusters in the outer halo, and a series of papers characterizing the faint but extensive white dwarf populations belonging to the globular clusters M4, NGC 6397 and 47 Tucanae.
In addition to his research on globular clusters and their constituent stars, Prof. Richer has worked on wide range of topics in astrophysics, including the mass function of the Galactic halo, optical counterparts of X-ray sources, and ground-layer adaptive optics systems for ground-based telescopes.
2012 Carlyle S. Beals Award: David Crampton
CASCA is pleased to announce the selection of Dr. David Crampton, from the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics (HIA), as the recipient of the 2012 Carlyle S. Beals Award.
Following the completion of his doctoral studies at the University of Toronto, Dr. Crampton joined the scientific staff at the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory in 1967. A leading scientific and technical figure in the Canadian astronomical community for more than 40 years, Dr. Crampton has authored more 250 refereed papers spanning a wide range of topics, including the properties of young stars, the structure of the Milky Way, X-ray binaries and black holes, quasars, the evolution of galaxies, and the history of cosmic star formation. Dr. Crampton’s past honours and distinctions include the BC Science Council Gold Medal (1983), the Astronomical Society of the Pacific Muhlmann Award (1991), and the Commemorative Medal of the Golden Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II (2002).
From 1986 to 2006, Dr. Crampton led the astronomy technology research group at HIA. During this period, he was the PI or Co-PI, on a series of the ground-breaking instruments for Canadian telescopes, including the CFHT Herzberg Spectrograph, MOS/SIS spectrograph and its OSIS near-IR upgrades, MOCAM, Adaptive Optics Bonnette, and MegaPrime, as well as the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS). Literally hundreds of astronomers have used the DAO, CFHT, and Gemini telescopes to publish thousands of articles based on data collected with these instruments. From 2004 to 2009, he was the leader of the TMT Science Instruments Group, a project in which he remains actively involved. Since 2010, he has been a leading figure in efforts to redevelop CFHT.
2010 Carlyle S. Beals Award: Bill Harris
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2008 Carlyle S. Beals Award: Ray Carlberg
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2006 Carlyle S. Beals Award: Georges Michaud
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2004 Carlyle S. Beals Award: Ernest R. Seaquist
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2002 Carlyle S. Beals Award: John Landstreet
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2000 Carlyle S. Beals Award: Gilles Fontaine
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1998 Carlyle S. Beals Award: Gordon A. H. Walker
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1996 Carlyle S. Beals Award: J. Richard Bond
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1994 Carlyle S. Beals Award: Peter G. Martin
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1992 Carlyle S. Beals Award: Rene Racine
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1990 Carlyle S. Beals Award: Scott Tremaine
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1988 Carlyle S. Beals Award: Sidney van den Bergh
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1985 Carlyle S. Beals Award: Anne B. Underhill
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1982 Carlyle S. Beals Award: John B. Hutchings
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