On May 27 Professor J. Richard Bond was awarded the 2025 Shaw Prize in Astronomy. Professor Bond, also a University Professor at the University of Toronto, shares the prize equally with Professor George Efstathiou of the University of Cambridge, UK. The two astrophysicists are distinguished for pioneering research that has fundamentally reshaped our understanding of the universe, including its geometry, age, and expansion rate.
The Shaw Prize recognizes their groundbreaking work on the fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) – the faint afterglow of the Big Bang. Their theoretical predictions, verified by an armada of ground-based, balloon-borne, and space-based instruments (like NASA’s WMAP and ESA’s Planck spacecraft), have led to remarkably precise determinations of the universe’s age, its geometric shape, and its composition of matter and energy.
Cosmology has experienced a golden age over the past two decades, largely driven by increasingly precise measurements of these tiny variations in the CMB. Though these fluctuations are minuscule – the CMB’s temperature is uniform to better than 0.01% – they hold the secrets of the universe’s infancy. Bond and Efstathiou, as recognized by the Shaw Foundation, were crucial in understanding that these variations could unlock fundamental cosmological parameters with accuracies previously unimaginable. Their theoretical frameworks are now the standard tools used worldwide to interpret CMB data.
This work has allowed scientists to confirm that the universe’s geometry is nearly flat, meaning that the curvature of space-time is essentially zero, determine its age to within 0.15% (approximately 13.8 billion years), measure its expansion rate with 0.5% precision, and quantify the amount of mysterious dark energy to better than 1%.
Beyond his seminal CMB work, Professor Bond has made other profound contributions recognized by the Shaw Prize. He co-introduced the concept of the “cosmic web”— the vast network of filaments connecting galaxies and galaxy clusters. He also developed key mathematical theories for understanding how galaxies cluster and made fundamental contributions to understanding the inflationary phase of the very early universe.
Prof. Bond’s many distinctions also include the 1998 CAPCRM Prize in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics, the 2010 CAP Medal of Lifetime Achievement, the Killam Prize, the NSERC Herzberg Gold Medal, 2023 CAP Fellow, Foreign Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy and the 2024 Hans A. Bethe Prize.