In order to create a fitting tribute to the memory of Marc Aaronson

Marc Aaronson

Marc Aaronson was an American astronomer.-Education:Aaronson was educated at the California Institute of Technology, where he received a BSc in 1972. He completed his Ph.D. in 1977 at Harvard University with a dissertation on the near-infrared aperture photometry of galaxies...

, his family, friends, and colleagues have established and privately endowed the Marc Aaronson Memorial Lectureship to promote and recognize excellence in astronomical research. The Lectureship and cash prize are awarded every eighteen months to an individual or group who, by his or her passion for research and dedication to excellence, has produced a body of work in observational astronomy which has resulted in a significant deepening of our understanding of the universe. Any living scientist is eligible for this award without consideration of race, sex, or nationality. The Marc Aaronson Memorial Lectureship Fund is administered by The University of Arizona; additional funding comes from Steward Observatory

Steward Observatory

The University of Arizona's Steward Observatorys main office is located on the University's campus and is closely tied to the Department of Astronomy. Established in 1916 by its first director, Andrew Ellicott Douglass, and a $60,000 bequest made by Lavinia Steward in memory of her late husband...

 and the National Optical Astronomy Observatory.

Recipients

Year	Recipient	Field
1989	Robert Kirshner Robert Kirshner Robert Kirshner is the Clowes Professor of Science in the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics at Harvard University. Kirshner has worked in several areas of astronomy including the physics of supernovae, supernova remnants, the Large-scale structure of the cosmos, and the use of Supernovae...	Cosmology; supernova-based distance studies
1990	Ken Freeman	Galaxy formation, dark matter
1992	John Huchra John Huchra John Peter Huchra [pronounced HUCK-rah] was an American astronomer and professor. He was the Vice Provost for Research Policy at Harvard University and a Professor of Astronomy at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He was also a former chair of the United States National Committee...	Cosmology, infrared astronomy
1993	Nick Scoville Nick Scoville Nick Scoville is the Francis L. Moseley Professor of Astronomy at Caltech and departmental chair.His research interests include interstellar molecular clouds, the star formation which occurs in these clouds, interacting ultraluminous-infrared galaxies and active galactic nuclei. His main hobby...	Dark matter, millimetre-wave astronomy
1994	Wendy Freedman	Observational cosmology, galactic evolution
1996	J Anthony Tyson	Large-scale sky surveys (now directing LSST project)
1998	John Mather John Mather John Norman Mather is a mathematician at Princeton University known for his work on singularity theory and Hamiltonian dynamics...	Infra-red astronomy and cosmology. Now senior scientist for JWST, Chief Scientist at NASA NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
1999	Bohdan Paczyński Bohdan Paczynski Bohdan Paczyński or Bohdan Paczynski was a Polish astronomer, a leading scientist in theory of the evolution of stars, accretion discs and gamma ray bursts....  (died 2007)	Stellar astronomy
2001	Ewine van Dishoeck Ewine van Dishoeck Ewine van Dishoeck is a Dutch astronomer and chemist. She is Professor of Molecular Astrophysics at Leiden Observatory.She is a member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences...	Interstellar molecules
2002	Geoffrey Marcy Geoffrey Marcy Geoffrey W. Marcy is an American astronomer, who is currently Professor of Astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, famous for discovering more extrasolar planets than anyone else, 70 out of the first 100 to be discovered, along with R...	Extrasolar planets
2004	Lyman Page Lyman Page Lyman Page is the Henry DeWolf Smyth Professor of Physics at Princeton University. He is an expert in observational cosmology and one of the original co-investigators for the WMAP probe that, over the past years, has made the most precise observations yet of the cosmic background radiation, an...	Microwave background radiation (now lead designer of WMAP)
2005	Brian P. Schmidt Brian Schmidt Brian L. Schmidt is a music composer for various video games and pinball games. He began in the video game music and sound industry in 1987 as a composer/sound designer and programmer for Williams Electronic Games in Chicago writing music and creating sound effects for pinball machines and coin...	Supernova-based studies of cosmic expansion
2007	Andrea Ghez Andrea Ghez Andrea Mia Ghez is an American astronomer and professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UCLA. She received a BS in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1987 and her Ph.D. at the California Institute of Technology in 1992...	High-resolution imagery; the Galactic centre
2008	Mike Brown Michael E. Brown Michael E. Brown has been a professor of planetary astronomy at the California Institute of Technology since 2003....	Small bodies in the Solar System