The Royal Academy awarded two of its prizes to researchers from the Observatory

On Saturday 14 December 2024, Jérémy Rekier of the Royal Observatory of Belgium was awarded the Mailly Prize by the Royal Academy of Sciences, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium. His colleague Sébastien Le Maistre, from the same institute, won the prize in the 2024 annual competition of the Class of Sciences.

The Mailly Prize to Jérémy Rekier

The Édouard Mailly Prize is awarded every four years by the Royal Academy to anyone who, through his or her writings or lectures, has helped to spread a taste for and knowledge of astronomy.

Jérémy Rekier works in the Reference Systems and Planetology Operational Directorate at the Observatory. He is a specialist in the dynamics of rotating fluids. He has applied this field to the study of the Earth’s rotation and its liquid core, as well as to the flow of the oceans of the ice moons of Saturn and Jupiter. In addition to his activities in disseminating and popularising science, for which he was awarded the prize, Jérémy teaches astronomy at UCLouvain.

Sébastien Le Maistre, winner of the 2024 Class of Science competition

Sébastien Le Maistre works in the same Operational Directorate as Jérémy Rekier. He specialises in the analysis of radio communications between the Earth and probes placed on the surface of planets, a field known as radioscience. He has used his expertise to prepare and analyse data from space missions, one of the most recent being the InSight mission on the surface of Mars.

This year, the Class of Science was looking for new research in the field of astronomy and physics. The class asked for ‘an original contribution, either experimental or theoretical, concerning the different parts of the planet Mars, whether in terms of its interior, polar caps, atmosphere or potential biosphere, past or present’.

As part of this competition, Sébastien Le Maistre submitted his master’s thesis, entitled The Heart of a Dancer, in which he reports a series of new results on the rotation and deep interior of Mars. He shows, for example, that the existence of a solid core at the very centre of the Red Planet is unlikely, which has serious consequences for energy dissipation and magnetic field models on Mars. This paper attracted the interest of the jury, who selected the author as the winner of the competition.

Congratulations to Jérémy and Sébastien for their prizes!

The winners and 2024 prizes of the Royal Academy of Belgium: https://academieroyale.be/fr/actualites-detail/messages/classe-sciences-laureats-prix-decernes-2024/