The Petrie Lecture is an invited discourse by an outstanding astrophysicist which is held at Annual Meetings of the Society in alternate (odd-numbered) years, in memory of the significant contributions to astrophysical research by the late Robert M. Petrie. The Petrie Lecture originated under the auspices of the Canadian Committee for the IAU, prior to the existence of the Society, and was revived by the Society in 1977 as a regular event. Nominations for the Petrie Lecture can be made by submitting the name of a nominee to the Awards committee at any time, and should originate from at least two CASCA members in good standing. Nominations for the 2021 Lecturer should be received by December 31 2020.
2021 Petrie Prize Lecture
CASCA is pleased to announce Dr. Heino Falcke as the 2021 R.M Petrie Prize Lecturer.
Dr. Falcke is a Professor of Astroparticle Physics and Radio Astronomy at the Institute for Mathematics, Astronomy, and Particle Physics of the Faculty of Science at Radboud University. For decades, he has been an international leader in the quest to use very-long baseline interferometry to image the shadow of a black hole. These efforts culminated in the stunning images of the supermassive black hole in M87 produced by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). Dr. Falcke is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2019 won the Breakthrough Prize for Fundamental Physics as part of the EHT collaboration.
CASCA is honoured to have Dr. Falcke give the Petrie Prize lecture.
| 2019 |  Gabriela Gonzalez |
Gravitational Waves Astronomy |
| 2017 |  Charles Beichman |
From protostars to exoplanets to life on other worlds |
| 2015 |  Wendy Freedman |
Measurement of Cosmological Parameters |
| 2013 |  Françoise Combes |
Molecular gas in galaxies across the Hubble time |
| 2011 | Andrew Fabian | Within one gravitational radius of the event horizon of a black hole |
| 2009 | Scott Tremaine | Stellar dynamics at the centres of galaxies |
| 2007 | Ewine van Dishoeck | Spitzer observations of star- and planet-forming regions from ice cold to steaming hot |
| 2005 | Reinhard Genzel | Massive Black Holes in Galaxies |
| 2003 | Sir Martin Rees | How Did the Cosmic Dark Age End? |
| 2001 | James Gunn | The Sloan Digital Survey |
| 1999 | Sidney van den Bergh | The Local Group of Galaxies |
| 1997 | Alex Filippenko | Supernovae and their Cosmological Implications |
| 1995 | George Herbig | IC 349 – Barbard’s Merope Nebula |
| 1993 | Maarten Schmidt | From Galactic Structure to Quasars |
| 1991 | P. B. Stetson | Progress in CCD Photometry |
| 1989 | P. J. E. Peebles | Tracing the Orbits of Galaxies back in Time |
| 1987 | Henry Matthews | C3H2 – A New Probe of the Interstellar Medium |
| 1985 | Charles Townes | The Galactic Centre |
| 1983 | M. J. Plavec | Strongly Interacting Binary Stars |
| 1981 | Hubert Reeves | La Physique des Premiers Temps de l’Univers |
| 1979 | Geoffrey Burbidge | The Redshift Problem |
| 1977 | J. Beverly Oke | Seyfert Galaxies and Quasars |
| 1971 | Jesse L. Greenstein | Pre-White Dwarf Evolution |
| 1971 | C. S. Beals | Forms of Impact Craters Related to the Thermal History of the Lunar Surface |
| 1970 | A. G. W. Cameron | The Chemical Evolution of the Galaxy |
