Black hole and gravity research honoured

Two astrophysicists have been honoured for research to further our understanding of black holes and the effects of gravity. The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) has awarded the 2019 George Darwin Lecture in Astronomy to Professor Chris Done for her research into black holes and her skills as a public speaker. Dr Baojiu Li will also receive the RAS's Fowler Award for pioneering the development and application of computer simulations to test modified theories about gravity. Black hole accretion. Professor Done is regarded as an international leader in observations of black hole accretion, when surrounding material falls into the black hole, and their associated jets and winds. She joins a prestigious list of former recipients of the George Darwin Lecture including Nobel Prize winner Kip Thorne, known for his contributions to the detection of gravitational waves. In 2010, the lecture was given by the Director of our Institute for Computational Cosmology, Professor Carlos Frenk, who is the recipient of the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, its highest honour.