David J. Schlegel, 2014
High Energy Physics: For exceptional leadership and innovation to transform cosmology into a precision science, and for its impact to map the expansion rate of the Universe, ascertain the nature of Dark Energy, and test General Relativity.
David J. Schlegel is honored for his exceptional leadership of major projects making the largest two-dimensional and three-dimensional maps of the universe, which have been used to map the expansion rate of the Universe to 10 billion light years and beyond. His fundamental technical contributions to high precision measurements of the expansion history of the Universe, and his massive galaxy redshift surveys to detect baryon acoustic oscillations, has helped ascertain the nature of Dark Energy, test General Relativity, and positively impact fundamental understanding of matter and energy in the universe. These efforts have made precision cosmology one of the most important new tools of high-energy physics.
