Radio Astronomer Honored by American Astronomical Society

Dr. Scott Ransom, an astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), received the American Astronomical Society’s (AAS) Helen B. Warner Prize on January 11, at the society’s meeting in Seattle, Washington. The prize is awarded annually for “a significant contribution to observational or theoretical astronomy during the five years preceding the award.”

Presented by AAS President Debra Elmegreen, the prize recognized Ransom “for his astrophysical insight and innovative technical leadership enabling the discovery of exotic, millisecond and young pulsars and their application for tests of fundamental physics.”

“Scott has made landmark contributions to our understanding of pulsars and to using them as elegant tools for investigating important areas of fundamental physics. We are very proud that his scientific colleagues have recognized his efforts with this prize,” said NRAO Director Fred K.Y. Lo.

A staff astronomer at the NRAO since 2004, Ransom has led efforts using the National Science Foundation’s Green Bank Telescope and other facilities to study pulsars and use them to make advances in areas of frontier astrophysics such as gravitational waves and particle physics.

In 2010, he was on a team that discovered the most massive pulsar yet known, a finding that had implications for the composition of pulsars and details of nuclear physics, gravitational waves, and gamma-ray bursts. Ransom also is a leader in efforts to find and analyze rapidly-rotating millisecond pulsars to make the first direct detection of the gravitational waves predicted by Albert Einstein. In other work, he has advanced observational capabilities for finding millisecond pulsars in globular clusters of stars and investigated how millisecond pulsars are formed.

A graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, NY, Ransom served as an artillery officer in the U.S. Army. After leaving the Army, he earned a Ph.D. at Harvard University in 2001, and was a postdoctoral fellow at McGill University before joining the NRAO in 2004.

Ransom will deliver his Warner Prize Lecture, entitled “Millisecond Pulsars: The Gifts that Keep on Giving,” at the AAS meeting on Tuesday, January 11, 2011, at 3:40 p.m., Pacific Time.

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The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.