Richard Bond and George Efstathiou have been awarded the 2025 Shaw Prize in Astronomy for their groundbreaking work in cosmology. The award recognizes their pioneering research on fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the afterglow of the Big Bang.
Bond and Efstathiou's theoretical predictions about the CMB have been validated by numerous ground-based, balloon-borne, and space-based instruments. This confirmation has led to precise determinations of the universe's age, geometry, and mass-energy content. Their work has been instrumental in shaping our understanding of the cosmos.
The $1.2 million prize will be shared equally between Efstathiou, a professor at the University of Cambridge, and Bond, a professor at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA) at the University of Toronto. The award ceremony is scheduled to take place in Hong Kong on October 21, 2025. The Shaw Prize Foundation, established in 2002 by Run Run Shaw, recognizes significant advancements in astronomy, life science and medicine, and mathematical sciences.