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Mr. William Borucki, The Shaw Prize Laureate in Astronomy 2015, delivered a lecture on “Kepler Space Mission: A Step in the Search for Life in the Galaxy” on 25 September at Shaw College of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK).  The lecture attracted over 500 staff and students from CUHK and local universities, professionals in the field, as well as secondary school teachers and students. 

The Shaw Prize in Astronomy 2015 was awarded to William J Borucki, Principal Investigator for the Kepler Mission of NASA Ames Research Center in recognition of his conception and leadership of the Kepler Mission, which greatly advanced knowledge of both extrasolar planetary systems and stellar interiors. 

The goal of the Kepler Space Mission is to determine whether Earth-size planets are common in the habitable zone of solar-like stars using the transit photometry method. If there is a planet orbiting a host star, and the planet moves between the host star and the observer, part of the starlight will be blocked. Using the Kepler telescope, Borucki and his team would be able to detect periodic variations in the brightness of stars caused by planets passing in front of them, hence identifying the sizes, orbit sizes and related information of planets. 

In 1984, William J Borucki and Audrey Summers first published a paper assessing the potential for detecting extrasolar planetary systems by the transit photometry method. Since then, Mr. Borucki began a long quest to convince the astronomical community and the US National Space and Aeronautics Administration (NASA) that a modest space mission could discover planets potentially capable of harbouring life. Four proposals submitted between 1992 and 1998 were rejected before the fifth was selected in December 2001 as Discovery Mission #10. Mission development began in 2002 and launch occurred in March 2009. 

Since its launch, the Kepler Mission discovered over 4,600 planetary candidates, with over 1,000 are verified planets, among which 12 planets are less than twice the size of Earth and orbit in the habitable zone. So far, over 1,000 scientists worldwide have been involved in analyzing, interpreting and publishing the Mission results. 

William J Borucki was born in 1939 in Chicago, USA and is the Principal Investigator for NASA’s Kepler Mission. He received a Master’s degree in Physics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1962 and a Master’s degree in Meteorology from San Jose State University, California in 1982. From 1962 until now, he has been working at NASA Ames Research Center as Space Scientist. Following his Master’s degree in Physics, he moved to Silicon Valley, where he first worked on the development of the heat shields for the Apollo mission in the Hypersonic Free Flight Branch at NASA Ames. After the successful moon landings, he transferred to the Theoretical Studies Branch where he investigated lightning activity in planetary atmospheres and developed mathematical models to predict the effects of nitric oxides and chlorofluoromethanes on Earth’s ozone layer. NASA’s Kepler Mission was launched in March 2009 to hunt for exoplanets using transit photometry. 

About The Shaw Prize 

The Shaw Prize is an international award that honours individuals who are currently active in their respective fields and who have achieved distinguished and significant advances, who have made outstanding contributions in culture and the arts, or who in other domains have achieved excellence.  This is the twelfth year that the Prize has been awarded since 2004 after being established under the auspices of Sir Run Run Shaw in November 2002. It consists of three awards: the Prize in Astronomy, the Prize in Life Science and Medicine, and the Prize in Mathematical Sciences.