ANSTO is particularly proud of playing a role in Professor Schmidt’s success by helping to fund his visits to international observatories.
Professor Schmidt received a number of grants through ANSTO in the 1990s as part of the Access to Major Research Facilities Program.
ANSTO salutes Professor Schmidt for setting an inspirational example, and once again showing budding young scientists that there is no limit to discoveries within the reach of Australian scientists.
The work of Professor Schmidt and his team has overturned conventional thinking into the structure and expansion of the universe. Their discovery pointed the way for much of the cutting edge research going on into big questions about matter, energy and the make-up of the world around us.
Professor Schmidt is Australia’s first Nobel Prize Winner in Physics since 1915, when the award was won by the father and son, Sir William Bragg and Sir William Lawrence Bragg. ANSTO is home to the Bragg Institute, one of the world’s leading facilities for using neutron scattering and X-ray techniques to solve complex research and industrial problems.
Professor Schmidt is the latest in a wave of Australians awarded Nobel Prizes for scientific endeavours – four in the last six years – making this a very exciting time for scientific research in Australia.
Professor Schmidt’s work has provided insights into the structure and expansion of our universe that underpin much of the cutting edge research going on into big questions about matter, energy and the make-up of the world around us.
ANSTO researchers are no strangers to the field of astrophysics, and are contributing to exciting international research by using nuclear techniques to analyse the make-up of meteorites. It is hoped the research will add greatly to the sum of knowledge now being gathered about the age and origins of the universe.
ANSTO will also continue to work with some of Professor Schmidt’s colleagues at the Australian National University through an exciting new initiative known as the Australian Collaboration for Accelerator Science or ACAS. ACAS will unite some of Australia’s brightest research talents in physics to study a wide range of areas including new materials and processes in nanotechnology, environmental science and medicine.
The centrepiece of ACAS will be powerful new accelerators that will help unlock the mechanisms of how the universe was formed.
Published: 06/10/2011