Brian Metzger to Receive Blavatnik National Award for Young Scientists

This post is adapted from a Blavatnik Awards press release:

The Blavatnik Family Foundation and the New York Academy of Sciences have announced the recipients of the 2020 Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists. Blavatnik laureates receive $250,000, the largest unrestricted scientific prize offered to America's most promising, young faculty-level scientific researchers. Among this year's group of three laureates is AAS member Brian Metzger (Columbia University).

Metzger, 2020 Blavatnik National Awards Laureate in Physical Sciences & Engineering, has settled a long-standing question about the origin of gold and other heavy elements in the universe. He predicted that gold, along with all the stable elements on the lower part of the periodic table, was created in a collision of two merging neutron stars called a "kilonova." In 2017, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory recorded the first confirmed kilonova explosion, and measurements taken after this discovery verified Metzger's predictions. Indeed, the heaviest elements present in the universe, like gold, were created by such cataclysmic events. Metzger's work has ushered in an exciting new era in astronomy that will revolutionize our understanding of the cosmos.

Metzger has won many accolades in his young career, including the 2019 Bruno Rossi Prize — shared with Daniel Kasen (University of California, Berkeley) — from the AAS High Energy Astrophysics Division. Metzger and Kasen gave their Rossi Prize lecture at the 235th AAS meeting in Honolulu, Hawai‘i, in January 2020.

"Brian Metzger has made multiple and profound theoretical predictions that have proven to be true, something that is rare in the field of astronomy," said Nicholas B. Suntzeff (Texas A&M University), a member of the 2020 Blavatnik National Awards Physical Sciences & Engineering Jury. "One of those predictions — how gold was made — is an everyday question that children might ask, but to which a true scientific answer had remained elusive."

"What an incredible honor to be recognized by this award, which uniquely elevates the work of young scientists," said Metzger. "It’s an incredible realization that the precious metals in my wedding band were likely forged in the vicinity of a black hole."

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the annual Blavatnik National Awards ceremony and gala dinner in honor of the 2020 Laureates has been postponed to 2021. The 2020 honorees will be celebrated alongside the 2021 honorees on 27 September 2021 at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.