Shaw Prize for cosmologist

The School of Physics & Astronomy's Professor John Peacock has been jointly awarded the prestigious Shaw Prize in Astronomy.

Professor Peacock, Professor of Cosmology at the Institute for Astronomy, receives his share of the $1 million prize for a study of galaxies that has furthered understanding of the evolution of the universe.

The UK-Australian Two-degree Field Galaxy Redshift Survey (2dFGRS), which Professor Peacock co-led, catalogued 220,000 galaxies between 1995 and 2002, achieving a tenfold leap in the size of such studies.

Professor Peacock's work is recognised for his "contributions to the measurements of features in the large-scale structure of galaxies".

The 2dFGRS was an incredibly successful project, made possible by many essential contributions from members of a big team. We all felt at the time that we were doing something revolutionary, and it’s wonderful to see this work get the recognition it deserves.

Revolutionary

The Shaw Prizes are Asia's most prestigious science awards, presented each year in the fields of Astronomy, Life Sciences and Medicine, and Mathematical Sciences.

Professor Peacock shares half the prize money with his 2dFGRS colleague, Professor Shaun Cole of Durham University, while the other half is awarded to Harvard University's Professor Daniel Eisenstein, for his work on the US-led Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

I am delighted that Professor Peacock has been given this extremely prestigious award. He has long worked to improve our understanding of cosmology and in the process helped build our Institute for Astronomy into one of the leading groups in the world.