WASHINGTON, Feb. 3, 2026 — The Heineman Foundation, AIP, and the American Astronomical Society are pleased to announce Alice Shapley as the winner of the 2026 Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics.
Shapley was selected for her “landmark observational campaigns and creative techniques that redefined the forefront of the field of galaxy formation and evolution.”
“AIP is proud to recognize the achievements of Dr. Shapley and her work on galaxy formation and the early universe,” said Michael Moloney, CEO of AIP. “Her pioneering approach to infrared and ultraviolet spectroscopy has unraveled many of the mysteries of galaxy formation.”
Shapley is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1997, she received a Bachelor of Arts in both physics, and astronomy and astrophysics, from Harvard-Radcliffe University. Shapley then earned a doctorate in astronomy from the California Institute of Technology in 2003.
It was at Caltech, while working on her thesis, that Shapley made her first major contribution to the field of astronomy. Working with her advisor, Chuck Steidel, she stacked hundreds of individual ultraviolet spectra from high-redshift galaxies to create low-noise composite spectra, revealing the contents of these distant galaxies for the first time at high fidelity.
“All of a sudden, the interstellar medium and outflowing gas and massive stars came into sharp focus,” said Shapley. “I still remember the first time that I looked at the data — I thought, ‘There’s all this astrophysics there that we can study!’”
At the same time, Shapley was part of a collaboration of astronomers using the Near-InfraRed Spectrograph on the W.M. Keck Observatory Telescope to survey hundreds of distant galaxies in near-infrared light. A decade later, she would use that experience to guide her as a co-principal investigator of another study, one that used updated near-infrared spectroscopic technology, performing a wide-ranging survey of over a thousand galaxies.
“With my colleagues at the University of California, we got about 50 nights on the Keck Telescope to use this instrument that was new at the time, called MOSFIRE, to do a big survey of the early universe,” said Shapley. “We learned a great deal in particular about the oxygen content of galaxies, but it also helped us figure out how to use the James Webb Space Telescope.”
When Webb became operational in 2022, Shapley was among the first researchers granted observation time on the telescope, which she used to continue her work developing a census of distant galaxy spectra. Many in the astronomical community have benefited from the pioneering work Shapley and her colleagues performed with the Webb and Keck telescopes.
In addition to her scientific accomplishments, Shapley has also contributed to the field of astronomy as an educator, mentoring several graduate students and postdoctoral researchers who have become distinguished scientists themselves. She served as a vice chair of the UCLA Department of Physics and Astronomy from 2018 to 2022 and has received multiple teaching awards.
Regarding the Heineman prize, Shapley is delighted to be considered alongside previous awardees such as Priyamvada Natarajan, John Carlstrom, and Karen Meech.
“I was amazed and shocked,” said Shapley. “It is a real honor to be in the company of these other prizewinners.”
Shapley’s award of the 2026 Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics will be presented at the 249th AAS Meeting, Jan. 10-14, 2027, in Salt Lake City, Utah. She will be invited to speak at next year’s meeting and will receive a certificate and a $10,000 award.
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