Matthew Bailes has been awarded the 2024 Prime Minister’s Prize for Science for his role in the discovery of Fast Radio Bursts and leadership in the field of radio astronomy. Together with colleagues Duncan Lorimer, Maura McLaughlin, David Narkevic and Froney Crawford, Matthew discovered the first known Fast Radio Burst when they were re-processing archival data collected using Murriyang, CSIRO’s Parkes radio telescope. Fast radio bursts are mysterious, intense pulses of radio waves from space lasting a few milliseconds. What causes the bursts remains a mystery, although recent research suggests they may be related to magnetars, dense stellar remnants with magnetic fields a thousand trillion times stronger than Earth’s magnetic field.

Matthew has a long association with the ATNF , as a user of Murriyang, a partner in the development of new instrumentation for the Parkes Observatory, and as a past member of the ATNF Steering Committee. Matthew currently leads the OzGrav centre to coordinate Australia’s research into gravitational wave science. (Image credit: Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science)