Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Prestigious award adds up to surprise honour for university mathematician
ST ANDREWS mathematician has been left “humbled” after receiving a top European prize for his work. Professor Eric Priest of the University of St Andrews has been awarded the Senior
Prize of the European Solar Physics Division of the European Physical Society.
The prize is the most prestigious award that any solar physicist in Europe can receive and is only presented every three years.
Prof Priest has been honoured for “longstanding leadership via mentoring, supervising and field-defining textbooks” and – wait for it – “fundamental contributions in key topics of solar magnetohydrodynamics, particularly magnetic reconnection in the solar atmosphere and solar coronal heating”.
Prof Priest said: “It is a real surprise to me and is humbling that
Amy life’s work is being acknowledged by my European colleagues in this way.”
He was due to receive the award at the triennial general assembly of European solar physicists in Italy in September but the assembly has been postponed to September 2021 because of the coronavirus outbreak. Prof Priest came to St Andrews as a young applied mathematics lecturer in 1968 and, despite retiring from his position 10 years ago, he is still active in research, regularly giving lectures and producing new ideas for publication.
He applies his mathematics to the sun, building models of the complex ways in which the sun’s magnetic field interacts with its atmosphere to produce many dynamic processes such as solar flares and huge ejections from the sun that influence the space weather around the Earth.