SIM Lite Project Scientist to Receive IAU’s Michelson Prize
07.14.10

Michael Shao, SIM Lite’s Project Scientist, is the first recipient of the Michelson Prize for lifetime achievement. It is awarded by the International Astronomical Union’s Commission 54, Optical and Infrared Interferometry. Shao is recognized for his pioneering work on ground-based and space-based interferometers, including the Mark I intereferometer at MIT, the Mark II and Mark III interferometers on Mt. Wilson, the Palomar Testbed Interferometer, the Keck Interferometer on Mauna Kea, and the Space Interferometry Mission. Shao has been a prominent leader in the interferometry community, developing new avenues of research, including narrow-angle astrometry and nulling.

The formal public announcement was made June 30, 2010, in San Diego, at a special evening session of the SPIE conference on “Optical and Infrared Interferometry II.”

The Michelson Prize is sponsored by the Mount Wilson Institute. A companion prize, the Fizeau Prize, was awarded for lifetime achievement to Professor Antoine Labeyrie and is sponsored by the Observatoire de la Cote d’Azur. Each awardee will receive a certificate of award and a modest honorarium. Both prizes are named for prominent physicists who worked on interferometry; Michelson was the first American physicist to receive the Nobel Prize and performed research locally on Mt. Wilson and in Irvine.

Project News Archive