Astronomical Society of India
Learned society in India, of professional astronomers / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Astronomical Society of India (ASI) is an Indian society of professional astronomers and other professionals from related disciplines. It was founded in 1972, with Vainu Bappu being the founder President of the Society, and as of 2010 has a membership of approximately 1000. Its registered office is at the Astronomy Department, Osmania University, Hyderabad, India. Its primary objective is the promotion of Astronomy and related branches of science. It organises meetings, supports and tries to popularise Astronomy and related subjects and publishes the Bulletin of the Astronomical Society of India.[1]
Prof. Dipankar Banerjee, Director of Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences , Nainital, is the Society's President.[2]
The Society makes a series of awards, the most prestigious of which is the Prof. M. K. Vainu Bappu Gold Medal awarded once every two years to "honour exceptional contributions to Astronomy and Astrophysics by young scientists anywhere in the world."[3] Previous award winners include:
- 1986 Yasuo Fukui
- 1988 George Efstathiou[4] and Shrinivas Kulkarni
- 1990 D. J. Saikia and Dipankar Bhattacharya
- 1992 Pawan Kumar
- 1994 Matthew Colless
- 1996 Sarbani Basu
- 1998 Peter Martinez[5]
- 2000 Biswajit Paul and Alycia J. Weinberger
- 2002 Brian P. Schmidt[6]
- 2004 R. Srianand and Ray Jayawardhana[7]
- 2006 Banibrata Mukhopadhyay
- 2008 Niayesh Afshordi and Nissim Kanekar[8]
- 2010 Marta Burgay and Parampreet Singh[9][10]
The Society also runs two prestigious lectures: the Modali Endowment Lecture and the R. C. Gupta Endowment Lecture.[3]