The official citation acknowledges the role of Eugene Churazov in resolving a conundrum, which baffled the astrophysical community for a quarter century: why the hot gas in clusters of galaxies that have a short radiative cooling time was actually not cooling and forming stars at the predicted rates. Churazov developed key theoretical insights and applied these to ROSAT, XMM-Newton, and Chandra observations to show that the buoyant plasma bubbles, produced by outbursts from supermassive black holes, could be used to measure the mechanical energy output from radiatively inefficient accretion onto these black holes. He also showed that the bulk of the AGN power is captured within the cooling cores of cluster atmospheres. This is sufficient to re-heat the cooling gas and, hence, explain the relatively small amounts of star formation and cool gas that is observed in the hot gas-rich systems from the early type galaxies to the rich galaxy clusters.

The COSPAR Massey Award honors the memory of Sir Harrie Massey, FRS, past Physical Secretary of the Royal Society and past member of the COSPAR Bureau. The award recognizes outstanding contributions to the development of space research, interpreted in the widest sense, in which a leadership role is of particular importance. The award is open to candidates from any country and laureates receive a Gold medal and a prize of 500 guineas.

COSPAR Massey Award