ESO Engineer Wins 2017 Tycho Brahe Prize

ESO is delighted to announce that this year’s Tycho Brahe Prize has been awarded to Bernard Delabre, one of ESO’s optical engineers. The prize is awarded “in recognition of the development or exploitation of European instruments or major discoveries based largely on such instruments”.

Bernard Delabre has been involved in the design of the optics of nearly all the instruments built by ESO over the past 35 years, including HARPS at La Silla, and UVES, MUSE, ERIS, HAWK-I, and CUBES at the Very Large Telescope. He has been the chief optical designer of a number of telescopes including the Extremely Large Telescope, for which he invented the beautiful five-mirror solution.

Delabre was awarded this prestigious prize in recognition of his leading role in the optical design of astronomical telescopes, cameras and spectrographs over the past 40 years. Throughout his career at ESO, he has exemplified the tradition of working at the forefront of technological evolution and has made profound contributions to optical and infrared ground based astronomy, which benefit the entire astronomical community both in Europe and worldwide.

The award will be presented to Bernard Delabre on 27 June, during the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science (EWASS) conference in Prague.

Courtesy of European Southern Observatory