George W. Wetherill, DTM director emeritus, and Vera C. Rubin, senior fellow, have recently received top honors from leading scientific organizations. Wetherill has been awarded the Henry Russell Lectureship from the American Astronomical Society, a prize awarded for lifetime achievement in the field of astronomy. Past recipients of this prize have included Nobel Laureates Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Enrico Fermi, and Riccardo Giaconni, as well as Allan R. Sandage of the Carnegie Observatories. This award was presented on February 4 in a private ceremony.

Rubin has been awarded the James Craig Watson Medal and prize from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Rubin receives this award "for her seminal observations of dark matter in galaxies, large-scale relative motions of galaxies, and for generous mentoring of young astronomers, men and women." Others who have received this prize include Willem De Sitter, Robert Leighton, and Carolyn and Eugene Shoemaker, as well as W. Kent Ford, Jr., a former DTM staff member who worked very closely with Rubin. This award, which is given every three years, will be presented to Rubin in a ceremony at the NAS Annual Meeting on April 19.