Congratulations to David Graham, whose paper “The Emission Measure Distribution of Impulsive Phase Flare Footpoints“, published while he was a PhD student in the A&A group, has won this year’s Robert Cormack Bequest Postgraduate Prize. This prize, awarded annually by the Royal Society of Edinburgh, is for the best nominated paper accepted for publication in 2013/14 with a postgraduate in a Scottish Institution as prime author. David gets a cheque for a helpful sum, and an invitation to speak to the annual Cormack Astronomy Meeting in November.

The paper investigates the temperature distribution of the plasma produced in the lower atmosphere (footpoints) of a flare during the phase of primary energy injection, finding a distribution peaking at 10MK and with a slope consistent with thermal conduction. It is the first time that the properties of flare footpoints have been investigated in this way. Co-authors were Iain G. Hannah, Lyndsay Fletcher (both GU) and Ryan O. Milligan (Queen’s University Belfast)

Well done David!