MORGANTOWN — Gov. Jim Justice came to Morgantown on Monday to celebrate the achievements of two WVU astrophysicists and present them with Distinguished West Virginian awards.
The honorees were Maura McLaughlin and Duncan Lorimer, wife and husband, and co-founders of WVU’s Center for Gravitational Waves and Cosmology. McLaughlin was recently elected as a member of the National Academy of Science. Lorimer was named a 2024 Fellow of the Royal Society, the “Oscar” of the scientific community.
And in 2023, they, along with colleague Matthew Bailes, were awarded the Shaw Prize in Astronomy — established in Hong Kong in 2002 and known as the Nobel Prize of the East — in recognition of the significance of their discovery of fast radio bursts.
WVU President Gordon Gee opened the ceremony held at WVU’s Planetarium and Observatory.
“The two of them are achieving great things,” he said. “They’ve brought great recognition to the state; they’ve brought international recognition to the university; and they’ve brought a great sense of place and purpose.”
McLaughlin presented Justice with a bag of cookies — decorated with Center for Gravitational Waves and Cosmology stickers — for Babydog, who was waiting outside in Justice’s air-conditioned SUV.
They came to WVU 18 years ago, she said, and she thanked WVU and the state for the investments that made their work possible. There was only one astronomy faculty member then, and no astronomy research program or graduate program, which they found surprising given the proximity of Green Bank, the largest steerable radio telescope in the world.
“It was a wonderful opportunity for us,” she said.
Lorimer spoke next. “We had kind of a blank slate and freedom to do what we wanted.”
He briefly described the discovery of the fast radio bursts — powerful millisecond energy pulses — formed 3 billion light years away. “We kind of just stumbled across something entirely new.” They don’t know what they are yet but may originate from neutron stars and could help astronomers map out the distribution of mass across the universe.
“We were just so overwhelmed to get that last year,” he said of the Shaw Prize. “It was just a wonderful surprise.”
McLaughlin is co-director of the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves Physics Frontiers Center, which recently announced evidence for gravitational waves with periods of years to decades that had never previously been observed.
She talked a bit about those, saying space time is not static. “The space that we’re sitting in right now is rippling with these low-frequency waves.” And distance between objects is changing all the time. The discovery is just the first step; now they have to figure out where the waves are coming from — possibly massive black holes.
Justice closed the ceremony. “This is unbelievable,” he said. “The work you do, all of you, the influence you have on the students that are here, the influence you have on your colleagues … absolutely is the reason why we have higher ed, the reason we have universities, the reason we challenge each other in this world every day.”
Presenting them with their Distinguished West Virginian awards, he said he’d presented only about 20 during his eight years in office. “From my standpoint, it’s about the highest honor I can possibly give you. Thank you for absolutely making us better in every way.”
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