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 Chair of the Awards committee at any time (self-nominations are accepted). Nominations for the 2025 Lecturer should be received by January 15 2025.
2023 Petrie Prize Lecture
CASCA is pleased to announce Dr. You-Hua Chu, Distinguished Research Fellow at the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA), as the 2023 R.M Petrie Prize Lecturer.
Dr. You-Hua Chu is an international leader in the studies of the interstellar medium, star formation and feedback, supernova progenitors and environments, and dusty disks around white dwarfs. She is an expert on both the Milky Way and Magellanic Clouds, having extensively researched the whole diverse population of these galaxies throughout her career. She makes use of both multi-wavelength observations (radio, infrared, optical and X-ray) and modelling to address fundamental questions about the fate of stars, their interaction with the interstellar medium and the evolution of galaxies in the nearby Universe. Throughout her career, Dr. You-Hua Chu has demonstrated outstanding leadership in the astronomical community on multiple continents and was notably the first woman to serve as Director of ASIAA.
CASCA is honoured to have Dr. You-Hua Chu give the Petrie Prize lecture.
| 2021 |  Heino Falke |
Astroparticle Physics and Radio Astronomy |
| 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 |