Andrea Ghez, who holds the Lauren B. Leichtman & Arthur E. Levine Chair in Astrophysics at the University of California, Los Angeles, has been selected to receive the 2015 Bakerian Medal, the most prestigious honor in the physical sciences awarded by Britain’s Royal Society.
The Royal Society, founded in the 1660s, is the British equivalent to the National Academy of Sciences in the United States. It’s goal is “to recognize, promote, and support excellence in science and to encourage the development and use of science to the benefit of humanity.”
Dr. Ghez is being honored for her work at the Keck Observatory to explore the suspected massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. She will receive a cash prize of 10,000 British pounds and will give the Bakerian Lecture in London this coming November.
Dr. Ghez, a 2008 MacArthur Fellow, is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She holds a Ph.D. in physics from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.