Prestigious Astronomy Award to be Presented during Conference at MPIA

The Gruber Foundation announces the recipients of the 2026 Gruber Cosmology Award.

To the point

• Gruber Cosmology Award 2026: The Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) and the Haus der Astronomie (HdA) will host the award ceremony on November 10 during a conference in Heidelberg, Germany.
• Awardees and Research: Alexei V. Filippenko, Ken'ichi Nomoto, and Stanford Woosley receive a shared $500,000 for decades of research on supernovae, enhancing understanding of the Universe's composition and evolution.
• Impact on Cosmology: Their work helped reveal dark energy, explained supernova variations, and advanced models predicting supernova outcomes including neutron stars, black holes, and gamma-ray bursts.

The Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) and the Haus der Astronomie (House of Astronomy, HdA) in Heidelberg, Germany, will host the presentation of the 2026 Gruber Cosmology Award. The ceremony will take place in the HdA’s galaxy-shaped building on 10 November during the conference “Illuminating the Cosmos: Chemical Elements in Stars, Planets, Nebulae, and Transient Extra-galactic Events.“

The conference is organised by a scientific organising committee (SOC) chaired by MPIA scientist and stellar chemistry expert Maria Bergemann, a Lise Meitner Group leader at MPIA. The co-chairs are Martin Pessah at the Niels Bohr International Academy (NBIA) and Anders Jerkstrand (Stockholm University, Sweden).

Today, the Gruber Foundation, which is based at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, USA, announced the three awardees

• Alexei V. Filippenko (University of California, Berkeley, USA),
• Ken'ichi Nomoto (The University of Tokyo, Japan), and
• Stanford Woosley (University of California, Santa Cruz, USA),

who will receive a shared US$500,000 award for their decades-long studies of supernovae — exploding stars. Their research has proven invaluable in understanding the composition and evolution of the Universe. The official citation honours them for “transforming supernovae from poorly understood stellar explosions into the basis for a quantitative, predictive, and empirically validated framework.”

Their supernova work has fundamentally influenced cosmology in multiple ways:

Dark energy. Filippenko characterized key variations among Type Ia supernovae, while Nomoto and Woosley independently modelled the underlying white dwarf explosions. This work proved essential to the late-1990s discovery that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating — driven by the still-mysterious "dark energy."

Supernova surveys. Filippenko's Lick Observatory Supernova Search (1998–2008) discovered more nearby supernovae than all other searches worldwide combined, establishing a foundational resource for the field and paving the way for later all-sky surveys.

Supernova models. Nomoto and Woosley independently modelled Type Ia and Type II supernovae, predicting their luminosities, physical structure, and remnants — including neutron stars and black holes. They also showed that the most extreme events produce gamma-ray bursts, energetic enough to merit a new classification: hypernovae.

Nucleosynthesis. Woosley and Nomoto calculated the elemental yields of different supernova types and demonstrated agreement with observed abundances in the Sun and other stars, making the study of supernovae a predictive science.

MPIA and HdA are honoured to host the ceremony of this prestigious Gruber Cosmology Award. Cosmology is one of the astrophysical research disciplines pursued at MPIA, one of 84 institutes of the Max Planck Society and one of the leading astronomy research facilities worldwide. Located on the MPIA campus, HdA serves as a centre for astronomy education and outreach, welcoming thousands of visitors — mostly pupils — each year, and regularly hosting international conferences.

This article is based on the press release from the Gruber Foundation, which is being published at the same time.

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