Dick Bond, a friend, mentor and longtime collaborator has won the 2008 Gruber Cosmology prize. Dick’s work has been instrumental at bringing us into this age of “precision cosmology”. He has always concentrated on that interface between theory and observation, making predictions for what we would see in the Cosmic Microwave Background, and how we might best extract that information. The present industry in Cosmological Data Analysis is in no small part down to his ongoing work in the field. To quote the Gruber citation itself:

Professor Bond’s work has provided the theoretical framework to interpret the observed inhomogeneities in the fossil radiation left over from the early stages of expansion of the Universe–the Big Bang. Professor Bond’s research has helped us understand the transition from the nearly featureless early Universe to the wonderfully structured world of galaxies, stars and planets today.

Congratulations, Dick!