Allan R. Sandage, an astronomer at the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution, in Pasadena, Calif., has been chosen to receive the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences' 1991 Crafoord Prize. The $260,000 Crafoord Prize has been given annually, on a rotating basis, since 1982 for contributions in fields not recognized by the Nobel Prizes--mathematics, astronomy, geosciences, and biosciences.
According to the award citation, Sandage was honored for his contributions to "the study of galaxies, their populations of stars, clusters and nebulae, their evolution, the velocity-distance relation (or Hubble relation), and its evolution with time." Sandage, 65, attributes his lifelong interest in astronomy to the two years he lived near Philadelphia as a child. When he was 11, his neighbor had a telescope in his backyard. "I looked through the telescope, and it was the greatest experience in my life, at that time," recalls Sandage. "I knew immediately I had to ...
