Professor Elena Pian, a Senior Astronomer at the INAF–Astrophysics and Space Science Observatory, is to receive the 2018 Giuseppe Occhialini Medal and Prize, it was announced at a ceremony in Italy today (17 September).
The prize, which is given jointly by the IOP and the Italian Physical Society (SIF), is awarded to Professor Pian “for her first detection, with the ESO Very Large Telescope equipped with the X-shooter spectrograph, of r-process nucleosynthesis in the optical/infrared counterpart of a gravitational radiation signal due to a binary neutron star merger”.
The announcement was made at the 104th National Congress of SIF at the University of Calabria. Professor Pian will be presented with the silver Giuseppe Occhialini Medal and a prize of €3000 at the IOP's Awards Dinner on 20 November.
The prize was instituted in 2007 and is conferred jointly by the two societies for distinguished work carried out within the 10 years preceding the award. It is conferred in even-dated years on a physicist who works in Italy and in odd-dated years on a physicist who works in the UK or Ireland.