About the Award
The Henry Draper Medal is awarded every four years and is presented with a $25,000 prize. The Medal honors a recent, original investigation in astronomical physics, of sufficient importance and benefit to science to merit such recognition. “Recent” is defined as a major publication resulting from the investigation should have appeared since the last presentation of the award (2021).
Adam K. Leroy, the Ohio State University, will receive the 2025 Henry Draper Medal.
Leroy’s pathbreaking efforts have characterized, in unprecedented detail, the physical nature of the interstellar medium and its relationship to star formation in nearby galaxies.
Harnessing cutting-edge technology and instruments to break new scientific ground, Leroy has conducted leading studies of the molecular gas and star formation in galaxies and developed a lasting next generation of multi-wavelength, high-resolution surveys, and data products. The astrophysics community has adopted and continue to apply these surveys and data products to advance scientific understanding.
Leroy’s work includes co-leading PHANGS-ALMA, a project that uses the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array radio telescope network to conduct the first systematic survey of “stellar nurseries” across our part of the universe. PHANGS-ALMA has mapped out more than 100,000 of these nurseries across nearly 100 galaxies, providing a synthetic view of the sites where stars and planets form. The paired PHANGS efforts using the Very Large Telescopes, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the James Webb Space Telescope have combined with PHANGS-ALMA to revealed how these stellar nurseries evolve and form stars.
Leroy will be honored in a ceremony on Sunday, April 27 during the National Academy of Sciences’ 162nd annual meeting. The ceremony will be livestreamed.
Award History
The Henry Draper Medal is the oldest Medal that is presently awarded by the National Academy of Sciences. It was first awarded in 1886 to Samuel P. Langley for “numerous investigations of a high order of merit in solar physics, and especially in the domain of radiant energy.” After receiving this award, Langley continued to have an amazingly accomplished career in astronomy and aviation. Langley served as the third Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, where he founded the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Air and sea craft, facilities, a unit of solar radiation, and an award have been named in Langley’s honor.
Previous recipients of the Henry Draper Medal continue to achieve outstanding advancements in their fields. Six recipients have been honored with a National Medal of Science, and nine recipients have received a Nobel Prize in Physics (Michelson 1907; Zeeman 1902; Bethe 1967; Ryle 1974; Chandrasekhar 1983; Penzias 1978; Wilson 1978; Taylor 1993; Barish 2017).
Henry Draper was a NAS Member, medical doctor, and amateur astronomer. Draper was a pioneer of astrophotography – a specialized type of photography for recording images of astronomical objects and large areas of the night sky. In 1873, Draper resigned from his medical career to focus solely on astronomy. He directed an expedition to photograph the 1874 transit of Venus, and was the first to photograph the Orion Nebula, on September 30, 1880. In addition to this award, a small lunar crater is also named after Henry Draper.
Most Recent Recipient
