The American Astronomical Society Honors Yale University’s Meg Urry With the Distinguished Career Award

Yale University’s Meg Urry was named the inaugural winner of the Distinguished Career Award from the American Astronomical Society’s (AAS) High Energy Astrophysics Division. Professor Urry will be honored at the American Astronomical Society’s convention in Hawaii in March

The award citation lauded Professor Urry “for her remarkable contributions to our understanding of a wide variety of topics in extragalactic high energy astrophysics, for establishing the unification paradigm of active galactic nuclei, her work on the origin of the extragalactic X-ray background, and for her tireless advocacy and support of women and underrepresented groups in science.”

“It’s an incredible honor to receive this inaugural award, which I share with the wonderful students and colleagues whose brilliant work built our understanding of active galactic nuclei,” Dr. Urry said. “The intellectual contributions of dozens of Yale students and postdocs, in particular, led to today’s comprehensive picture of supermassive black hole growth.”

Dr. Urry is the Israel Munson Professor of Physics and Astronomy in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and director of the Yale Center for Astronomy & Astrophysics. She joined the Yale faculty in 2001 and is the former chair of the department of physics.

Professor Urry is a graduate of Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, where she majored in physics and mathematics. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in physics from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.