The Carlyle S. Beals Award was established by CASCA in 1981 in recognition of the groundbreaking research of the late C.S. Beals. The Beals Prize was originally awarded to provide a grant for travel to a General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union (every three years). In 1988, however, it was first awarded in its present form: to a Canadian astronomer or an astronomer working in Canada, in recognition of outstanding achievement in research (either as a specific achievement or as a lifetime of research). The recipient shall be invited to address the Society at its Annual Meeting. To be considered for the award, nominees must be current CASCA members in good standing.
An award is now considered every second year, in even-numbered years. The nomination package must consist of a joint letter of nomination by at least two members of CASCA in good standing, the CV of the candidate, and three external letters of support (e.g., from international experts in the nominee’s field). No letter should exceed three pages in length. No other material should be submitted. Please submit nomination packages entirely in electronic form to the Chair of the Awards committee. The deadline for submissions for the 2020 award is Dec 16 2019.
2018 Carlyle S. Beal Award
The 2018 Carlyle S. Beals Award is presented to Dr. Mark Halpern for his outstanding career contributions to the foundations of modern cosmology.
Dr. Halpern is currently Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of British Columbia. He has made many fundamental contributions to cosmological instrumentation and data analysis, and his work has been essential for making the measurements underpinning the Standard Model of Cosmology that is now the accepted framework for our current understanding of the Universe.
Over the course of his distinguished career, Dr. Halpern has been involved in a number of high-profile endeavours in the study of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). He made the first measurement of the dipole moment of the CMB at submillimeter wavelengths in the 1980s, he developed prototype bolometers for the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite experiment, and he was the only non-US member of the team that built the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). The WMAP team won the Gruber Prize in Cosmology in 2012 for determining the Universe’s vital statistics – age, geometry and origin. Dr. Halpern has been leading the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) which saw first light in Penticton, BC in September 2017. CHIME is set to make unprecedented measurements of Baryon Acoustic Oscillations in the distant Universe.
This portfolio of pioneering work in cosmology makes Dr. Halpern a most deserving recipient of CASCA’s Beals Award.
| 2016 |  Chris Pritchet |
“The Progenitors of Type Ia Supernovae” View Citation |
| 2014 |  Harvey Richer |
“Globular clusters” View Citation |
| 2012 |  David Crampton |
“Carpe Lux. Beal’s Lecture 2012” View Citation |
| 2010 | Bill Harris | “Between Galaxies and Stars” |
| 2008 | Ray Carlberg | “Preliminary SNLS Third Year Results” |
| 2006 | Georges Michaud | “Atomic Diffusion in Pop II Stars, Globular Clusters and WMAP” |
| 2004 | Ernest R. Seaquist | “The Galaxy M82 – a Rosetta Stone for the Starburst Phenomenon” |
| 2002 | John Landstreet | “Magnetic Fields in Stars” |
| 2000 | Gilles Fontaine | “The Potential of White Dwarf Cosmochronology” |
| 1998 | Gordon A. H. Walker | “Challenges for the New Millennium: Some Persistent Astronomical Mysteries” |
| 1996 | J. Richard Bond | “Cosmic Background Anisotropies and Large Scale Structure: Past, Present and Future” |
| 1994 | Peter G. Martin | “Interstellar Pinball: A Sometimes Shocking Story of Excited Molecular Hydrogen” |
| 1992 | Rene Racine | “Support for Astronomy” |
| 1990 | Scott Tremaine | “Is the Solar System Stable?” |
| 1988 | Sidney van den Bergh | “Supernovae and their Remnants” |
| 1985 | Anne B. Underhill | |
| 1982 | John B. Hutchings |