The winners of the 2023 Copernicus Award were announced on Monday, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
Poland’s new scientific prize is designed to recognise scholars who push the frontiers of human knowledge, according to officials.
Krzysztof Górski, secretary of the state-appointed Copernicus Academy, which grants the award, said that both Barish and Peebles deserved to be honoured for their contribution to science.
Górski told reporters: “Our laureates represent what’s most beautiful about science ... Both winners have focused their research on the theory of relativity, on cosmology and on developing knowledge about the entire universe.”
Prof. Philip James E. Peebles, who was awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on physical cosmology, said he felt “especially privileged” to receive the 2023 Copernicus Award due to the achievements of the Polish astronomer.
Peebles, who is Canadian, added that Copernicus had “helped revolutionise” the understanding of the universe, developing the heliocentric understanding with the Sun at its centre.
Meanwhile, the other winner of the 2023 Copernicus Award, Prof. Barry C. Barish, said that Copernicus was the first scientist he heard about as a child.
Barish, who was awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and the first direct detection of gravity waves, said his uncle had told him about "the genius Polish astronomer," as they watched sunsets together in his native American state of Nebraska.
Referring to the international nature of the Copernicus Academy, Barish said that during his long scientific career he had met with scholars from around the world. He added that "scientists communicate with each other very efficiently.”
He also said that it was important not to create “artificial borders” in the scientific world, the PAP news agency reported.
Copernicus Award
Poland’s new Copernicus Award is granted annually for groundbreaking contributions to fields including astronomy, economy, medicine, philosophy, theology and law, the PAP news agency reported.
Up to two awards are given each year, and every laureate receives a cash prize of PLN 500,000 (EUR 112,400), according to officials.
The 2023 Copernicus Awards will be handed out in a ceremony at Warsaw’s Royal Castle on Tuesday evening, the PAP news agency reported.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, nauka.gov.pl
