Discovery wins award for UH astronomer

A University of Hawaii astronomer has won a prestigious award for the discovery that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, rather than slowing, as had been long assumed.

John Tonry was named a recipient of the 2015 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, sharing the award with the other members of the High-Redshift Supernova Search Team and with members of the Supernova Cosmology Project.

In all, 50 astronomers played a role in the research, and each will get a piece of the $3 million prize, UH-Manoa said in a statement Friday. The work also won the 2011 Nobel Prize in physics, but that went only to the two teams’ leaders.