Highest honour for university scientist

A PROFESSOR at Glasgow University has been awarded the highest honour from the Royal Astronomical Society.

James Hough has won a Gold Medal in astronomy for his work on gravitational waves – an honour previously bestowed upon great minds such as Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking.

The Gold Medal usually recognises lifetime achievement.

First awarded in 1824, two Gold Medals have been awarded each year since 1964 – one for geophysics and the other for astronomy.

Professor Hough has worked on the study of gravitational waves for more than 45 years.

He said: “I am deeply honoured and delighted to have been awarded the Gold Medal. I have been lucky in my working life to be part of what I believe is the biggest scientific breakthrough of the century.

“I would like to dedicate this award to all my colleagues and friends who have played a vital role in the birth of gravitational wave astronomy.”

The medal is for Professor Hough’s “seminal contribution to the science of gravitational waves”.

These disturbances in the curvature of space-time were predicted by Einstein in 1916.

Gravitational waves were first detected a century later by a team of experts at the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO), emanating from the merger of two massive black holes.

This discovery gave astronomers a new way to study the universe.