The Shaw Prize in Astronomy  2013  Laureate

John F Hawley was born in 1959 in Annapolis, Maryland, USA and is currently Associate Dean for the Sciences, and VITA Professor and Chair of the Department of Astronomy at the University of Virginia, USA. He obtained his PhD from the University of Illinois in 1984 and was Bantrell Fellow at the California Institute of Technology from 1984 to 1987. He has been associated with the Department of Astronomy at the University of Virginia as early as 1987, first as Assistant Professor (1987–1993), then as Associate Professor (1993–1999) and from 1999, as Professor of Astronomy.

The Shaw Prize in Astronomy 2013 is awarded in equal shares to Steven A Balbus and John F Hawley for their discovery and study of the magnetorotational instability, and for demonstrating that this instability leads to turbulence and is a viable mechanism for angular momentum transport in astrophysical accretion disks.