Three Royal Astronomical Society Fellows, including a former winner of the Caroline Herschel Medal, have been recognised in this year's European Astronomical Society (EAS) prizes.
Professor Gillian Wright CBE, of the UK Astronomy Technology Centre in Edinburgh, was awarded the prestigious Tycho Brahe Medal in honour of her leadership in the development of the Mid-Infrared Instrument on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
She said: "It is a great honour to have my work on MIRI recognised by the award of the Tycho Brahe Medal by the EAS.
"The MIRI team is delighted our collaboration led to an instrument that is changing understanding of the universe in such an exciting time for space exploration."
With a career spanning more than four decades, Professor Wright has been at the forefront of advancing our understanding of the universe and developing cutting-edge astronomical technologies.
She was Director of the UK Astronomy Technology Centre from 2012 to 2024 and also spent over 20 years as the European Principal Investigator leading a consortium of institutes across Europe that developed MIRI in partnership with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Dr Graeme McGhee, who received the 2024 Patricia Tomkins Prize for the best thesis in instrumentation science for astronomy and geophysics, and Professor Rashid Sunyaev were also recognised.
Professor Sunyaev, of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, was awarded the 2026 Fritz Zwicky Prize for Astrophysics & Cosmology for his pioneering work on the cosmic microwave background and the theory of disk accretion.
Dr McGhee, an astrophysicist at the University of Glasgow, received the 2026 MERAC Prize for the Best Doctoral Thesis in New Technologies (Multi-messenger).
He said: "I am both ecstatic and honoured to have my work recognised on such a prestigious international platform. This prize represents years of curiosity, persistence, and a strong belief that dedicating time to solve a problem, and better understand one small piece of the world, can make a difference.
"The thesis demonstrated key advances in optical technologies that can lead to great improvements in the next upgrades of gravitational wave observatories. Every new observation we make shows us that the universe still holds more mysteries, while providing us with the clues to solve them – and that is what makes this work, and others like it, so meaningful."
Professor Wright, Professor Sunyaev and Dr McGhee will join the other three awardees in giving a plenary lecture at the EAS Annual Meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, from 29 June to 3 July 2026.
ENDS
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