Stephen Balbus, winner of The Shaw Prize in Astronomy 2013
Professor Steven Balbus of Oxford University's Department of Physics has won The Shaw Prize in Astronomy 2013, sharing a $1m award for work that explains how astronomical objects form. The Shaw Prize is an annual international award to honour individuals who are currently active in their respective fields and who have recently achieved distinguished and significant advances. The Shaw Prize, established under the auspices of Mr Run Run Shaw in November 2002, is managed and administered by The Shaw Prize Foundation based in Hong Kong. This year's Shaw Prize in Astronomy, worth $1m, recognises the contribution the research of Professor Balbus and Professor John Hawley of the University of Virginia has made to our understanding of the accretion of matter in the Universe: the process in which planets, black holes, and stars, form. In space as gas is drawn together the small amount of rotation that is always present means that as the gas contracts it rotates faster and faster - rather like figure skaters spinning by drawing in their arms. This forms a gaseous accretion disc. However, a longstanding problem was how this spinning gas ever made it into the centre of such a disc to build an object like a planet or black hole.
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