An Australian astronomer has won a share of a prestigious award for his work in measuring the size and age of the universe.
Melbourne University professor Jeremy Mould and his international colleagues have won the prestigious 2009 Gruber Prize for Cosmology, announced overnight in the United States.
He shares the $US500,000 ($A624,000) award with Wendy Freedman, Director of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington and Robert Kennicutt, Director of the Institute of Astronomy of Cambridge University.
The award recognises their leadership in the definitive measurement of the Hubble constant, which explains the expansion rate of the universe since its beginning, thus connecting the universe's size with its age.
The findings of the Hubble Space Telescope Key Project in 1999 have since been confirmed and recognised as one of the most important measurements in astronomy.
"We were able to greatly improve the accuracy of the measurement," says Prof Mould.
"We are receiving this prize now because a lot of additional work has confirmed our findings, allowing the prize givers to be very confident of our results."
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