RSAA astronomer Professor Ken Freeman has won the 2014 Gruber Cosmology Prize. Professor Freeman shares the prize with Jaan Einasto, R. Brent Tully, and Sidney van den Bergh. The citation reads: "Through their observations and analyses of the structure and evolution of the nearby universe, Jaan Einasto, Kenneth Freeman, R. Brent Tully, and Sidney van den Bergh provided essential elements in the study of the behavior of the universe on the largest scales".

In the 1970s, Professor Freeman was one of the first scientists to point out that spiral galaxies must contain a large fraction of dark matter and has continued to study the density of dark matter in dwarf galaxies, as well as the formation and dynamics of the Milky Way.

The Gruber prize will go alongside Professor Freeman’s other accolades that include the Matthew Flinders Medal of the Australian Academy of Science (2013), the Dannie Heineman prize of the American Institute of Physics and the American Astronomical Society (1999), the Prime Minister’s Science Prize (2012) and the Henry Norris Russell Lectureship of the American Astronomical Society.

He has been a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science since 1981 and a Fellow of the Royal Society of London since 1998.

The Gruber Foundation honors and encourages educational excellence in the fields of Cosmology, Genetics, Neuroscience, Justice and Women's Rights, recognizing groundbreaking work that provides new models that inspire and enable fundamental shifts in knowledge and culture.

For more information, see the Gruber Foundation web site, and the Gruber Cosmology prize details.