Caltech astrophysicist wins 1 of first Kavli Prizes

PASADENA, Calif.--Quasars--now known to be compact halos of matter that surround the massive black holes of distant galaxies--were once thought to be stars in our own galaxy. Now, Maarten Schmidt, who showed that quasars are thousands of millions of light-years away from Earth, has been named one of the first recipients of the $1 million Kavli Prize for his contributions to the field of astrophysics.

Schmidt, the Moseley Professor of Astronomy, Emeritus, at the California Institute of Technology, is one of seven recipients of the new Kavli Prize. He shares the astrophysics award with Donald Lynden-Bell, of Cambridge University, who was also a postdoc at Caltech from 1960 to 1962.

The seven pioneering scientists are being recognized for transforming human knowledge in the fields of nanoscience, neuroscience, and astrophysics. The prize was established through a partnership between the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, the Kavli Foundation, and the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research.

Schmidt and Lynden-Bell are honored for their contributions to understanding the nature of quasars. In making their award, the members of the Kavli Astrophysics Prize Committee said, "Maarten Schmidt and Donald Lynden-Bell's seminal work dramatically expanded the scale of the observable universe and led to our present view of the violent universe in which massive black holes play a key role."

In 1963, using the 200-inch Hale Telescope on Palomar Mountain, Schmidt studied the visible-light spectrum of quasar 3C273. He discovered that it had a very high redshift, which meant it was moving away from Earth at 47,000 kilometers per second. Examination of the spectrum of another quasar revealed a motion double that of 3C273. Schmidt calculated that these objects lay beyond our galaxy, and he immediately realized that they must be emitting not only far more energy than our sun, but hundreds of times more energy than the entire Milky Way galaxy, which contains 10 billion stars. It was later determined that this enormous energy comes from a volume no larger than the size of our own solar system. Subsequent investigations of the evolution and distribution of quasars led Schmidt to discover that they were more abundant when the universe was younger.