AsianScientist (Aug. 18, 2015) – The Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP) has announced that Dr. Douglas N.C. Lin is the 2015 recipient of its Catherine Wolfe Bruce Gold Medal.
The highest award bestowed by the ASP, the Catherine Wolfe Bruce Gold Medal recognizes a recipient for his or her lifetime of outstanding research in astronomy. Awarded since 1898, the medal has gone to some of the greatest astronomers of the past century. Lin was nominated for the Bruce Medal by the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
To quote from their nomination letter: “Lin’s experience as a world-leading expert has served as an asset for the Chinese astronomical community, raising the profile and boosting the visibility of astronomy in the country and cultivating the next generation of Chinese astronomers.”
Lin, founding director of the Kavli Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Peking University, is recognized for his achievements in a variety of domains, including the orbital motion of the Magellanic Clouds; the formation and evolution of exoplanets; the physics of cataclysmic variables and accretion disks; and the dynamics, structure, and evolution of Saturn’s Rings.
Lin has made major contributions to our understanding of the dynamics of the Magellanic Clouds within our Galaxy’s dark halo—a campaign that Lin was the driving force on for decades. His writing on the subject remains a classic reference and his study of dark matter in dwarf spheroidal galaxies started a new subfield.
Furthermore, Lin has investigated the evolution of planetary systems and is responsible for the models that help interpret the findings from exoplanet studies. Shortly after the discovery of a “hot Jupiter” in 51 Pegasus, Lin wrote the seminal paper on how these objects could have obtained such close proximity to their host star.
Lin recently was honored with the Brouwer Award from the Division of Dynamical Astronomy of the American Astronomical Society for his achievements and contributions to this field. He received both a Humboldt Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship and has held a number of distinguished academic positions, including Honorary Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, Lecar Lecturer at Harvard University, Rothchild Professor at the Isaac Newton Institute of Cambridge University, and the Carnegie Centenary Professor at the University of St. Andrews. Lin also served as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
During his career to date, Lin has published over 225 peer-reviewed articles and has been cited over 15,600 times.
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Source: Astronomical Society of the Pacific; Photo: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/Flickr/CC
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