A Cardiff University researcher who was part of the team that made the first detection of gravitational waves in 2015 has been recognised for his outstanding contributions to the field of physics.
Professor Bernard Schutz FRS FLSW of the School of Physics and Astronomy is the recipient of the Royal Society's Rumford medal 2025.
Introduced in 1800, the Rumford medal has since been awarded to only a few more than 100 recipients.
It recognises Professor Schutz's decades-long work on relativistic astrophysics, the detection of gravitational radiation and education.
He receives the Rumford medal and a gift of £2,000.
The award was a complete surprise to me, and humbling, in view of its long history and many distinguished recipients. I hope that the award will further raise the visibility of gravitational wave research and thereby inspire more young scientists to join the research teams of my colleagues at Cardiff University, at the Albert Einstein Institute, and at collaborating institutions around the world.
Now an Emeritus Professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy, Professor Schutz's research career at Cardiff spans more than 50 years.
A native of the USA, he completed his undergraduate degree in physics at Clarkson College of Technology. From there he completed his PhD at the California Institute of Technology, under the supervision of Kip Thorne.
After a one-year postdoc in Stephen Hawking's group at Cambridge University and two further years at Yale in the group of Jim Bardeen, he took up a lectureship in 1974 at Cardiff University, joining its new astronomy research group.
"Having Kip Thorne as a mentor for my PhD was foundational," he recalls.
"He shaped the careers of many of today's leading theoretical physicists and went on to share the 2017 Nobel Prize for the first discovery of gravitational waves."
Professor Schutz's research initially addressed problems in general-relativistic stellar pulsation and stability, and the orbital motion of binary stars and black holes.
In the 1980s, he and colleagues at Cardiff began collaborating with the Glasgow and German gravitational wave detection groups, pioneering ways that gravitational wave data is now analysed.
An early outcome was my 1986 discovery of how to infer the distance to a binary system from its gravitational wave signal, a rare circumstance in astronomy that has become fundamental to the interpretation of gravitational wave signals, and which offers a new way of measuring the expansion rate and age of the Universe.
In 1995, Professor Schutz moved to Potsdam, Germany, to help found the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute), now the largest in the world in relativity. While there he remained a part-time Professor at Cardiff.
His division focussed on numerical solutions of Einstein's equations and on gravitational-wave data analysis and interpretation.
"Having the opportunity to shape the development of the Albert Einstein Institute in Germany was wonderful," he said.
I'm deeply grateful to the Max Planck Society for its confidence in me. And, of course, being part of the team that made the first detection in 2015 was the fulfilment of decades of hard work - immense satisfaction!
Professor Schutz's work on gravitational waves has also been recognised through his election to the Royal Society, the Learned Society of Wales and the US National Academy of Sciences.
The Rumford Medal is one of 27 medals and awards being announced by the Royal Society for outstanding contributions to scientific discovery, public engagement and research culture.
Sir Adrian Smith, President of the Royal Society, said: "The recipients of this year's medals and awards have all made outstanding contributions to science and its applications for the benefit of humanity.
"They have done so by furthering our understanding of the processes that govern the world around us, changing the practices of academia to build a more robust and inclusive research environment, and engaging new audiences.
"Celebrating these diverse contributions is core to the Society's mission and I offer my congratulations to all the 2025 recipients."
