Dirac Medallists 2021

The 2021 Dirac Medal and Prize is awarded to Alessandra Buonanno, Thibault Damour, Frans Pretorius, and Saul Teukolsky "for establishing the predicted properties of gravitational waves in the curvature of spacetime produced when stars or black holes spiral together and merge."

This achievement was essential for the LIGO detection of gravitational waves from these energetic astronomical events. The consistency of theory and observation is an impressive check of the accuracy of the General Theory of Relativity.

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