Academia Sinica Academician Yuk Ling Yung has been awarded the Gerard P. Kuiper Prize of the Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS) of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) for his numerous enduring contributions to planetary science and enthusiastic devotion to astronomy education, the society announced August 21. He is one of five prize winners for 2015. The prizes will be presented at the 47th annual DPS meeting in Maryland, USA in November.

　　Dr. Yung is currently a Smits Family Professor at the California Institute of Technology, California, USA. He has made numerous contributions to planetary science, particularly in the areas of atmospheric photochemistry and aeronomy, global climate change, radiative transfer, atmospheric evolution, and mesospheric-thermospheric chemistry and exchange. His unique integration of observations, laboratory data, and careful modeling has yielded pioneering insights into the current properties and behavior of solar-system atmospheres, as well as their historical evolution. His models of the chemistry of planetary atmospheres have been widely used to interpret the results from space missions, including the Vikings, Voyagers, Pioneer Venus, Galileo, Venus Express, Mars Science Laboratory, Cassini, and New Horizons.

　　The keys to his success have been his enormous enthusiasm and inexhaustible tenacity for research, his very broad knowledge in many fields, his creative and innovative approach to problems in planetary atmospheres. His continual flow of new automatic ideas, his breadth of knowledge, and his big-picture understanding of planetary science have inspired generations of students and postdoctoral researchers over the past four decades, said the academy.

　　Dr. Yung was elected an Academician of Academia Sinica in 2010 and he is also an Elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He won the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal in 2004.

　　The AAS, established in 1899, is the major organization of professional astronomers in North America and has a current membership of about 7,000. The mission of the AAS is to enhance and share humanity’s scientific understanding of the universe. The DPS founded in 1968, is the largest division within AAS, devoted to solar system research. DPS membership totals approximately 1,415 including planetary scientists and astronomers, about 20% residing outside the U.S. The Gerard P. Kuiper Prize was named after one of the founding fathers of contemporary planetary sciences Dutch-American astronomer Dr. Gerard Kuiper (1905-1973).

　　Related Websites: http://dps.aas.org/prizes/2015