Emeritus Professor Kurt Lambeck AO from the Australian National University was awarded the 2018 Prime Minister’s Prize for Science at a ceremony in Canberra this week.

The award recognises Professor Lambeck’s 50-year contribution to Australian and global geodesy that underpins the GPS technology on which we rely for accurate navigation and enables more accurate guidance of satellites and space missions, helps track changes in sea levels over time, and facilitates detailed understanding of the deep structure of Earth.

During his career, Professor Lambeck has held leadership roles at universities in France and the US and has won a number of international awards from Sweden, Japan, France, Norway, the US and the Netherlands.

Professor Lambeck joined the Research School of Earth Sciences at ANU in 1977.  He is currently President of the Australian Academy of Science and a member of the Antarctic Ecosystem and Environment CRC.  

He was elected to the Australian Academy of Science in 1984 and to the Royal Society in 1994. He is a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (1993), Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (1994), Academia Europaea (1999),the Académie des Sciences, Institut de France (2005), and the US National Academy of Sciences (2009). He has received a number of international prizes and awards including the Tage Erlander Prize from the Swedish Research Council (2001), the Prix George Lemaître from the Université catholique de Louvain (2001), and the Eminent Scientist Award from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (2004).

He has published two books and more than 250 papers on subjects in geophysics, geology, geodesy, space science, celestial mechanics, environmental geoscience, and glaciology.

AIG congratulates Professor Lambeck on his prestigious award which recognizes his contribution to Earth sciences throughout his distinguished career.