Astronomical Society of India
The Astronomical Society of India (ASI) is an Indian society of professional astronomers and other professionals from related disciplines. It was founded in 1972, with Vainu Bappu being the founder President of the Society, and as of 2010 has a membership of approximately 1000. Its registered office is at the Astronomy Department, Osmania University, Hyderabad, India. Its primary objective is the promotion of Astronomy and related branches of science. It organises meetings, supports and tries to popularise Astronomy and related subjects and publishes the Bulletin of the Astronomical Society of India.[1]
Prof. Rajaram Nityananda of the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Ganeshkhind, Pune is the Society's President.[2]
The Society makes a series of awards, the most prestigious of which is the Prof. M. K. Vainu Bappu Gold Medal awarded once every two years to "honour exceptional contributions to Astronomy and Astrophysics by young scientists anywhere in the world."[3] Previous award winners include:
- 1986 Y. Fukui
- 1988 G.P. Efstathiou and Srinivas R. Kulkarni
- 1990 D.J. Saikia and D. Bhattacharya
- 1992 Pawan Kumar
- 1994 Mathew Colless
- 1996 Sarbani Basu
- 1998 Peter Martinez
- 2000 Biswajit Paul (astronomer) and Alycia J. Weinberger
- 2002 Brian P. Schmidt
- 2004 R. Srianand and Ray Jayawardhana
- 2006 Banibrata Mukhopadhyay
The Society also runs two prestigious lecutres; the Modali Endowment Lecture and the R. C. Gupta Endowment Lecture.[3]