Nominate Someone (Perhaps Yourself!) for the Weber Award

The Joseph Weber Award for Astronomical Instrumentation is awarded to an individual for the design, invention, or significant improvement of instrumentation (not software) leading to advances in astronomy. The award is given annually, and there are no restrictions on a candidate’s citizenship or country of residence. As is true for most AAS prizes, self-nominations are allowed.

Can you think of someone (or are you someone) who has conceived, designed, built, and/or upgraded instrumentation that’s been critical to the success of your work, whether alone or as an indispensable member of a collaboration? If you do, consider nominating that person for the Weber Award!

The AAS established the Weber Award in 2001 in honor of Prof. Weber’s pioneering work on masers, lasers, and gravitational wave detectors. The prize was awarded for the first time in 2002, to James E. Gunn for developing state-of-the-art instruments for ground- and space-based telescopes. Since then, the award has been given to two dozen astronomers and engineers who have brought more of the universe into view. Weber awardees have developed and applied new technologies and techniques for building telescopes, capturing images and spectra from radio waves to gamma rays with increased sensitivity and efficiency, sensing gravitational waves, compensating for atmospheric turbulence, and more.

The Weber Award includes an honorarium check and a framed certificate, both of which are presented by the AAS President at one of the semiannual meetings of the Society. Recipients also have their registration fee waived for the meeting at which the prize is presented.

In recent years, there have been only a handful of nominations for the Weber Award. While these nominations have all met the criteria and led to the selection of exemplary winners, the small number of nominations has caused concern that some of our colleagues whose work meets the criteria for this award are not being recognized. For this reason, we invite and encourage AAS members to consider nominating a colleague or themselves for the Weber Award. Think not only of scientists you’ve worked with, but also of engineers and technologists who’ve provided the tools you use to collect data. Without the instruments and methods created by these brilliant inventors, we would be blind to much of what’s going on in the cosmos.

Nominations require the following components: a curriculum vitae and bibliography, both limited to two pages in length; abstracts of three publications illustrative of the candidate's merit; and three letters of support. The nominee provides all the documents except the letters of support. All prize nominees are required to complete the AAS professional ethics self-disclosure form. Information on the award, including past winners, is on the Weber Award webpage. For help submitting a nomination see the Nomination Instructions. Nominations are now open, and the deadline for submitting nominations is 30 June.