Conny Aerts and Jørgen Christensen-Dalsgaard – both ERC grantees – and Douglas Gough won the Prize for their techniques that unveiled the hidden intricacies within the sun and stars. Claire Voisin, also an ERC grantee, has been recognised for her work in algebraic geometry, which enables the description of shapes that defy visualisation.

The Crafoord Prize in Astronomy 2024 has been awarded to Douglas Gough from University of Cambridge in the UK, Jørgen Christensen-Dalsgaard from Aarhus University in Denmark, and Conny Aerts from KU Leuven in Belgium “for developing the methods of asteroseismology and their application to the study of the interior of the Sun and of other stars.” The awards were announced on 31 January 2024.

Conny Aerts had previously received two ERC Advanced Grants exploring asteroseismology (2009) and researching massive stars (2016). In 2023, together with three other researchers she won an ERC Synergy Grant and is now working on massive star modelling. In that project she took on one of the biggest challenges in astrophysics: accurately measuring the age of stars.

Jørgen Christensen-Dalsgaard received an ERC grant in 2011 and played a major role in the first-generation development of asteroseismology. He combined advanced observations of stellar oscillations with state-of-the-art modelling of stars and then added in research low-mass cool stars.

The Crafoord Prize in Mathematics 2024 has been awarded to Claire Voisin from Institut de Mathématiques de Jussieu in France “for outstanding contributions to complex and algebraic geometry, including Hodge theory, algebraic cycles, and hyperkähler geometry.”  Professor Voisin is the first woman to receive the Prize in Mathematics.

Claire Voisin, together with three other researchers, received an ERC Synergy Grant in 2020. She has provided important and highly acclaimed contributions in the field of algebraic geometry, through both counterexamples and strongly positive results for some of the most famous unsolved problems. 

The Crafoord Prize is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Crafoord Foundation in Lund, Sweden. The disciplines, which change every year, are mathematics and astronomy, geosciences, biosciences, and polyarthritis. The Academy is responsible for selecting the Crafoord Laureates. The prize sum of 6 million Swedish Krona makes the Crafoord Prize one of the world´s largest scientific prizes. The Crafoord Prize in Mathematics and Astronomy was first awarded in 1982. . Apart from this year’s laureates, two other ERC grantees won Crafoord Prizes in 2011 and 2013. 

About the ERC

The ERC, set up by the European Union in 2007, is the premier European funding organisation for excellent frontier research. It funds creative researchers of any nationality and age, to run projects based across Europe. The ERC offers four core grant schemes: Starting Grants, Consolidator Grants, Advanced Grants and Synergy Grants. With its additional Proof of Concept Grant scheme, the ERC helps grantees to bridge the gap between their pioneering research and early phases of its commercialisation. The ERC is led by an independent governing body, the Scientific Council. Since November 2021, Maria Leptin is the President of the ERC. The overall ERC budget from 2021 to 2027 is more than €16 billion, as part of the Horizon Europe programme, under the responsibility of European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, Iliana Ivanova