Laura Kreidberg receives the Annie Jump Cannon Award of the American Astronomical Society

January 12, 2021
During its semiannual meeting, the American Astronomical Society (AAS) announced this week the recipients of its 2021 prizes for outstanding achievements in research and education. One of the four award winners is Director Laura Kreidberg from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA), who is honored with this year's Annie Jump Cannon Award in Astronomy. The AAS is the major organization of professional astronomers in North America.

The award is given for outstanding research and promise for future research by a female scientist within five years after earning her PhD. The AAS press release states that Laura Kreidberg receives the award "for her pioneering research on the structure, composition, and dynamics of exoplanet atmospheres. Her efforts in combining theoretical models with precise observations from space-based telescopes have laid a foundation for comparative planetology beyond the solar system. She has also been a leader in the exoplanet community, spearheading initiatives for large projects with the Hubble and Webb telescopes.

Laura Kreidberg started in May 2020 as third director at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany. Before, she worked as Clay Fellow at the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard and Smithsonian.  Kreidberg initiates and conducts world-leading research projects to characterize the atmospheres of planets around other stars and is currently building a new department at MPIA on this research field.

The prize was first awarded in 1934 and is named after the American astronomer Annie Jump Cannon (1863-1941), who became known primarily for her spectroscopic observations of stars and whose modifications led to the famous Harvard classification with the spectral classes O, B, A, F, G, K, M.

Due to the CORONA pandemic, this time the AAS meeting and the award ceremony will only take place virtually:

Link to the AAS meeting

Link to the original Press Release of the AAS

KJ

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