Welcome from Oxford. My name is Roger Davies, and I am President of the EAS. This is the second time the Annual Meeting has had to be held virtually and I am delighted to say we have a record turnout of 2464 registrations from 64 countries and 2073 abstracts presented. We are looking forward to 16 Symposia, 33 Special Sessions, 5 Lunch Sessions as well as the Prize and Plenary lectures. As these figures suggest this has been a huge enterprise to organise and for the second year running the Leiden team, ably aided and abetted by the wider Netherlands community, have hosted us. I am enormously grateful to them, and to Scientific Organising Committee co-chaired by Joop Schaye and Conny Aarts as well as my colleagues on Council supported by the staff of Kuoni Congress for their efforts to make Virtual EAS 2021 a success.
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The individual session chairs and their organising committees have worked hard to produce exciting programmes, each of which adds to the scientific vitality of the week’s events. Astronomy continues to be much in the news and the public awareness of the night sky is growing which we hope to enhance through this meeting - specifically with a public lecture by Martin Rees on Thursday evening.
Your Society continues to work hard for you and recently we made a successful application to the Wilhelm and Else Heraeus Foundation to fund a series of workshops to promote the careers of young scientists from European academic or research institutions. These 5 day workshops will give participants the chance to present their own research, discuss their science, and to visit the host institute as well as have review lectures from senior astronomers. A pilot workshop will be held in 2022 and if successful, we plan two further workshops. I am very grateful to the Heraeus Foundation, whose focus is to support scientific research and education in physics, for funding this initiative.
In March 2019 the Society, in partnership with ESA, organised the first week long exhibition and afternoon of talks at the European Parliament as an opportunity for Parliamentarians and their staff to keep abreast of developments in astronomy. The focus of that week was on results from the GAIA mission. After considerable effort I am pleased to say that a second event, focused on exoplanets and involving both ESA and ESO, is planned for the week of 24 October 2021 with presentations on 26 October, including from Nobel Laureate Professor Michel Mayor.
Which brings me to the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics. It is a pleasure to congratulate a former Tycho Brahe Prize winner Reinhard Genzel, my Oxford colleague Roger Penrose, and Andrea Ghez. It is surely a sign of the health of our subject that three of the last four Nobel Prizes in Physics have been awarded for astrophysical investigations.
The ASTRONET activity, coordinated by funding agencies across Europe, is reaching its concluding stages. On 11 June 2021 the Society hosted an online event at which the panel reports were presented to the community as part of their consultation exercise. The ASTRONET Roadmaps help set the direction of future large-scale infrastructures for astronomy there will be a further consultation at the end of July when reports from the cross-cutting panels are available. I strongly encourage you to participate.
I am grateful to all our Organisational Members that play an important role in securing the financial sustainability of the Society and its activities for European astronomy. I am delighted this year to welcome three new Organisational members:
- the Czech Astronomical Society,
- Institut für Astronomie und Astrophysik, Tübingen,
- the Astronomy & Astrophysics journal.
I invite any institution that is interested in joining to contact me or the Treasurer.
We hope to be back meeting face-to-face in Valencia, Spain next year. For more news about your Society EAS members can attend the General Assembly at 15h15 on Wednesday. I would like to encourage all of you, and especially early career researchers, to join the over 4000 of us who are already EAS members, either through your national society or directly through the website.
I wish you a stimulating, enjoyable, and most of all, safe week.
Roger Davies
EAS President
EAS 2022 in Valencia, 27 June - 1 July 2022
Proposals for Symposia, Special Sessions, and Lunch Sessions due 30 September 2021
EAS Council is happy to announce that the EAS 2022 Annual Meeting is planned to take place in Valencia, Spain, from 27 June to 1 July 2022. We invite proposals from colleagues interested in organising a Symposium, a Special Session, or a Lunch Session at EAS 2022. All details can be found at this page. The deadline for submitting expressions of interest is Thursday 30 September 2021.
EAS Council invites members to nominate suitable candidates for the 2022 EAS Prizes. The Tycho Brahe Medal is awarded annually in recognition of the development or exploitation of European instruments, or major discoveries based largely on such instruments. The MERAC Prizes for Best Doctoral Thesis are awarded to recognize and support young European astronomers. The Fritz Zwicky Prize for Astrophysics and Cosmology recognises scientists who have obtained fundamental and outstanding results related to astrophysics and cosmology.
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Short biographies of previous years' awardees and full details regarding the different EAS Prizes can be found on the EAS website:
Nominations can only be made by EAS members and need to be endorsed by 2 persons, at least one of them being an EAS member. Nominations are only accepted through a web form accessible for EAS members. The deadline for nominations for all EAS Prizes is Sunday 31 October 2021. Note that self-nominations are not allowed.
Elections will be held for several positions in the EAS Council. The President (Roger Davies), one Vice-President (Sara Lucatello), the Treasurer (Nick Kylafis), and one Councillor (Andi Burkert) are all re-eligible and wish to continue their service. The position of one Councillor (Maarten Baes) becomes vacant. In accordance to the election procedures approved at the 2017 General Assembly, the EAS membership is invited to nominate candidates, provided that these candidates have indicated in writing that they are willing to serve if elected.
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Nominations for candidate Councillors need to arrive, by email to the EAS Office (eas @ unige.ch), within 2 months of this newsletter, i.e., no later than Thursday 16 September 2021. A Nominating Committee will then be formed and elections will be run online by the end of the year. The transition between the old and new Council will take place at the EAS Annual Meeting 2022 in Valencia.
If you would like to contribute, please contact