Pedro Ferreira completed his degree in Engineering Physics at Instituto Superior Técnico in 1991. Thirty-three years later, he was awarded the Royal Astronomical Society’s Eddington Medal for “investigations of outstanding merit in theoretical astrophysics”. The award recognises Pedro Ferreira’s ground-breaking work in understanding the parts of the standard cosmological model that are beyond our current understanding of physics, such as the physical cause of cosmological acceleration”. He is the first Portuguese researcher to receive this medal.

Currently teaching at the University of Oxford, Pedro Ferreira says “it is an honour and a pleasure” to receive this award, which was “largely due to my brilliant collaborators and PhD students”. From his student days at Técnico, he highlights three motivating aspects. “First, I had a group of fantastic colleagues, many of whom became scientists or pursued fascinating careers in other scientific areas. Second, when I got into Técnico, the Department of Mathematics and the Department of Physics were investing in a new generation of students”, he added.

He also stressed, “Técnico allowed me to be self-taught – I didn’t feel obliged to follow a standard learning process and I had the opportunity to choose my path”. In his opinion, this independence and self-education, “was an excellent preparation for a scientific career”.

Since 1953, the Royal Astronomical Society has been awarding the Eddington Medal to several prominent names in the field of astronomy, such as Hans Bethe, Stephen Hawking, Roger Penrose and Jim Peebles. Pedro Ferreira is the most recent name to join this list and, with him, a part of Técnico.