A new prize named in tribute to Bath astronomer Caroline Herschel will celebrate outstanding research by women astrophysicists in the UK and Germany.
The Caroline Herschel Medal will be administered by the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) in collaboration with the German Astronomical Society (Astronomische Gesellschaft, AG).
It will be awarded in alternate years to researchers based in the UK and Germany, with an accompanying prize fund of £10,000.
From its foundation in 1820, the RAS included astronomers from Germany, including Caroline Herschel, pictured, and her brother William, who both moved to Bath from Hanover in the second half of the 18th century.
Caroline was the first woman in Britain to receive a royal pension for astronomy and in 1828 became the first to win the RAS Gold Medal, awarded in recognition of her discovery of eight comets and her work refining and updating star catalogues.
No woman would be awarded an RAS Gold Medal again until 1996.
The family lived at 19 New King Street, which is today occupied today by the Herschel Museum of Astronomy, operated by the Bath Preservation Trust.
It was in the garden there on the night of March 13, 1781, that William, using a homemade telescope, discovered the first planet since the days of the Ancient Greeks.
He initially called it Georgium Sidus (George’s Star), after King George III, before it was renamed Uranus after the Greek god of the sky, Ouranos.
Following then end of most Covid-related restrictions, the museum is now open again between Wednesday and Sunday weekly, allowing visitors to find out more about the extraordinary lives of Caroline and William Herschel.
