Vening Meinesz Medal 2011: Harald Schuh

The Vening Meinesz Medal was awarded to Harald Schuh for his work in the field of Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) and his important contribution to space geodetic research. Harald Schuh has been working in the field of Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) modelling and analysis for almost 30 years. He has achieved a deep understanding in the complex dynamics of the Earth's motion with respect to the distant quasar system and the related processes covering Earth orientation, geophysics and astrophysics. Remarkable is his extensive work in determining Earth rotation, for which application of VLBI is indispensable. Moreover, he used VLBI ' recently as president of the IVS (International VLBI Service) ' for the realization of a kinematic inertial reference system and has pushed the steady improvement of VLBI measurement technology and analysis. Another example is given by the studies of his group to achieve better VLBI modelling, e.g., of tropospheric effects ('Vienna mapping function'). He investigated the impact of Earth orientation changes on celestial reference frames.