Tomalla Foundation
Encyclopedia
The Tomalla Foundation for Gravity Research promotes research into gravity
in Switzerland
and in the world. It was founded in 1982 according to testamentary wishes of Dr. Walter Tomalla, an engineer from Basel
, Switzerland. Every third year, the foundation awards prizes for exceptional research in gravitation and/or cosmology
, and funds research fellows and visitors for gravity research at Swiss universities.
2008
2003
2000
1996
1993
1987
1984
1981
Gravitation
Gravitation, or gravity, is a natural phenomenon by which physical bodies attract with a force proportional to their mass. Gravitation is most familiar as the agent that gives weight to objects with mass and causes them to fall to the ground when dropped...
in Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
and in the world. It was founded in 1982 according to testamentary wishes of Dr. Walter Tomalla, an engineer from Basel
Basel
Basel or Basle In the national languages of Switzerland the city is also known as Bâle , Basilea and Basilea is Switzerland's third most populous city with about 166,000 inhabitants. Located where the Swiss, French and German borders meet, Basel also has suburbs in France and Germany...
, Switzerland. Every third year, the foundation awards prizes for exceptional research in gravitation and/or cosmology
Cosmology
Cosmology is the discipline that deals with the nature of the Universe as a whole. Cosmologists seek to understand the origin, evolution, structure, and ultimate fate of the Universe at large, as well as the natural laws that keep it in order...
, and funds research fellows and visitors for gravity research at Swiss universities.
Tomalla Prize laureates
2009- Viatcheslav Mukhanov - for his contributions to inflationary cosmology and especially for the determination of the density perturbation spectrum from inflation.
- Alexei Starobinsky - for his pioneering contributions to inflationary cosmology and especially for the determination of the spectrum of gravitational waves generated during inflation.
2008
- Demetrios ChristodoulouDemetrios ChristodoulouDemetrios Christodoulou is a Greek mathematician and physicist, who first became well known for his proof, together with Sergiu Klainerman, of the nonlinear stability of the Minkowski spacetime...
2003
- Jim PeeblesJim PeeblesPhillip James Edwin Peebles is a Canadian-American physicist and theoretical cosmologist who is currently the Albert Einstein Professor Emeritus of Science at Princeton University. Peebles was born in Winnipeg and completed his bachelor's degree at the University of Manitoba...
2000
- Gustav TammannGustav TammannGustav Andreas Tammann was the director of the Astronomical Institute of the University of Basel, Switzerland, European Space Agency member of the Space Telescope Advisory Team, and Member of Council of the European Southern Observatory. His research interests include supernovae and the...
- for his efforts in measuring the expansion rate of the universe and especially for his pioneering work using Supernovae as standard candles.
1996
- Werner IsraelWerner IsraelWerner Israel, OC, FRSC, FRS is a Canadian physicist.Born in Berlin, Germany and raised in Cape Town, South Africa, he received his B.Sc. in 1951 and his M.Sc. in 1954 from the University of Cape Town. He received his Ph.D...
1993
- Allan SandageAllan SandageAllan Rex Sandage was an American astronomer. He was Staff Member Emeritus with the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, California. He is best known for determining the first reasonably accurate value for the Hubble constant and the age of the universe.-Career:Sandage was one of the most...
1987
- Joseph Hooton Taylor, Jr.Joseph Hooton Taylor, Jr.Joseph Hooton Taylor, Jr. is an American astrophysicist and Nobel Prize in Physics laureate for his discovery with Russell Alan Hulse of a "new type of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation."...
1984
- Andrei SakharovAndrei SakharovAndrei Dmitrievich Sakharov was a Soviet nuclear physicist, dissident and human rights activist. He earned renown as the designer of the Soviet Union's Third Idea, a codename for Soviet development of thermonuclear weapons. Sakharov was an advocate of civil liberties and civil reforms in the...
- for his fundamental contribution to the problem of the matter - antimatter asymmetry in the Universe and his new ideas on gravity at a fundamental level (induced gravityInduced gravityInduced gravity is an idea in quantum gravity that space-time background emerges asa mean field approximation of underlying microscopic degrees of freedom, similar to the fluid mechanics approximation of Bose–Einstein condensates...
).
1981
- Sivaramakrishna ChandrasekharSivaramakrishna ChandrasekharSivaramakrishna Chandrasekhar was an Indian physicist who won the Royal Medal in 1994. He was the founder-president of the International Liquid Crystal Society....