PEOPLE - HONOURS AND AWARDS

Second medal honour announced for University of Leicester Professor

RAS Announces Geophysics Medal Winners for 2006

Jpeg image of Professor Cowley Available- email pressoffice@le.ac.uk

Professor Stan Cowley, of the University of Leicester, has been awarded the Royal Astronomical Society's highest award, the Gold Medal, for his outstanding contribution to the field of geophysics. Other winners of the RAS geophysics awards for 2006 include Professor Steve Schwartz of Imperial College London, Dr Clare Parnell of the University of St Andrews and Dr Brian Marsden of the Smithsonian Astronomical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Professor Cowley said: "The Gold Medal is the highest award that the Royal Astronomical Society bestows, and has a long list of very distinguished former recipients going back to 1824, so it is a major honour which I have been very pleased to accept. It has occurred by chance at the same time that the Julius Bartels medal was awarded to me by the European Geosciences Union, so 2005 has turned out to be a very special year indeed. Special thanks go to my wife and family for their continuous support over the years, and all my colleagues at Leicester for their unfailing comradeship and good humour."

Professor Martin Barstow, Head of Physics and Astronomy, said: "I am delighted that Stan has received this award. Not only does it recognise him personally but it also highlights the world-class quality of his research group in Space Plasma Physics and of the Physics and Astronomy Department."

Professor Cowley has played a pivotal role in understanding the interaction of the solar wind with the Earth's magnetosphere. In particular, he has demonstrated that reconnection, a process where magnetic field lines are broken and rejoined, controls the large-scale dynamics of processes across the boundary between the magnetosphere and the solar wind. As a result of this work, reconnection is now understood to be a unifying framework for many magnetospheric phenomena throughout the Solar System. In awarding the Gold Medal to Professor Cowley, the RAS also recognises his outstanding work as a science communicator and his role in serving the scientific community.

Earlier this month, it was announced that Professor Cowley is to be awarded the Julius Bartels Medal at a ceremony in Vienna in April. The award has been established by the European Geosciences Union in recognition of the scientific achievement of Julius Bartels. It is reserved for outstanding research in solar-terrestrial sciences.

Professor Cowley is described in the citation for the Julius Bartels Medal as: "One of the outstanding scientists of his generation."

For more information on RAS medals, see: http://www.ras.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=244&Itemid=104

For interviews: Contact Prof Stanley W H Cowley, Head, Radio & Space Plasma Physics Group, Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Leicester

Tel: +44-116-223-1331