Prof. Jim Moran Awarded 2013 Grote Reber Medal
The Grote Reber Foundation has announced that Professor Jim Moran will be the recipient of the 2013 Grote Reber Gold Medal. Moran is the Donald H. Menzel Professor of Astrophysics at Harvard University and a Senior Radio Astronomer at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO), where he has spent his entire career. He also holds a position as Concurrent Professor of Astronomy at Nanjing University and previously served as Chair of the Harvard Department of Astronomy and Associate Director of Radio and Geoastronomy at the CfA.
Moran did his undergraduate work at the University of Notre Dame and received his PhD from MIT in 1968. He has previously received the American Astronomical Society's Newton Lacy Pierce Prize, was the joint recipient of the 1971 Rumford Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was the 1996 NRAO Jansky Lecturer. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a coauthor of a widely used reference book, Interferometry and Synthesis in Radio Astronomy.
The Grote Reber Medal is awarded annually for significant and innovative contributions to radio astronomy. Moran is being recognized for his pioneering work in the development and application of spectroscopic Very Long Baseline Interferometry. For his Ph.D. dissertation work, Moran made the first images of maser spots. Later he extended this work to use various molecular masers as tracers of the structure and magnetic fields in the envelopes of late type stars and massive protostars. He continued on to study water vapor, methanol, and silicon monoxide masers in the envelopes of both late-type stars, as well as massive protostars.
The 2013 Grote Reber Medal will be awarded to Moran on July 8, 2013 in Turku, Finland, during the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science.