ann2601 — Announcement

2026 Royal Astronomical Society Awards recognise contributions to JWST

23 July 2026

The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) annual awards ceremony will be held at the UK’s National Astronomy Meeting on 23 July. This year’s awards include recognition of the significant contributions of two scientists to the success of the James Webb Space Telescope.

The 2026 Herschel Medal, which honours investigations of outstanding merit in observational astrophysics, was awarded to Professor Andrew Bunker, of the University of Oxford. Prof. Bunker has been a core member of the Instrument Science Team since 2005 for the ESA-provided Near-InfraRed Spectrograph (NIRSpec) instrument and has played leading roles in the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES), undertaken as part of the Guaranteed Time Observations. In 2023 Prof. Bunker published the remarkable spectrum of the GN-z11 galaxy at a redshift of 10.6, giving new insights into the star- formation histories and chemical enrichment of galaxies in the earliest stages of the Universe. The full citation for the Herschel Medal is here.

The 2026 Jackson-Gwilt Medal, which recognizes outstanding invention, improvement, or development of astronomical or geophysical instrumentation or techniques, was awarded to Professor Alistair Glasse, of STFC’s UK Astronomy Technology Centre, Edinburgh. Prof. Glasse has had key roles in the development of mid-infrared instrumentation for major observatories over the past 30 years and, since 2001, was the lead Instrument Scientist for JWST’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). In particular, as the vital connection between the science and engineering teams, Prof. Glasse led the complex on-sky commissioning of MIRI, that established JWST’s unprecedented mid-IR capabilities for astronomical discoveries. The full citation for the Jackson-Gwilt Medal is here.

Contacts

Chris Evans
ESA/HST & ESA/JWST Project Scientist
ESA Office, STScI Baltimore, USA
Email: [email protected]