Caltech’s Yung Receives Prize for Planetary Science Research

Yuk Yung, the Smits Family Professor of Planetary Science, has received the 2015 Gerard P. Kuiper Prize from the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences. The prize, given for outstanding contributions to the field of planetary science, recognizes Yung’s work on atmospheric photochemistry, global climate change, radiative transfer, atmospheric evolution, and planetary habitability.

“His unique integration of observations, laboratory data, and quantitative modeling has yielded pioneering insights into the characterization, origin, and evolution of atmospheres in the solar system,” the award citation notes.

Yung joined the Caltech faculty in 1977. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. A longtime collaborator with scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Yung is a coinvestigator on the Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer Experiment on the Cassini mission to Saturn and on the Orbital Carbon Observatory-2, a project to map CO2 concentrations on Earth.

Previous recipients of the Kuiper Prize include Professor of Planetary Science Andrew Ingersoll; Peter Goldreich, the Lee A. DuBridge Professor of Astrophysics and Planetary Physics, Emeritus; and Eugene M. Shoemaker, Caltech alumnus (BS’47, MS ’48) and former chair of the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences.