2025 Shaw Prize in Astronomy<\/a> \u2013 to this day he describes himself as simply \u201csomeone who is still trying to understand everything.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\nChallenging the skeptics<\/p>\n
Ever since he was a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology, Bond has sought to better understand fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background \u2013 the \u201cfirst light\u201d released about 380,000 years after the Big Bang \u2013 and what they can tell us about the early universe. At the time, many were skeptical that these temperature variations could even be detected.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bond and his collaborator\u00a0George Efstathiou, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Cambridge and the co-recipient of the Shaw Prize, built the theoretical framework and computer codes to model the information encoded in the first light. In effect, the pair was working ahead of the technology to tell researchers where to look and what to expect.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cInstead of having a cornucopia of theories, we were converging upon one theoretical framework and class of ideas,\u201d says Bond, who is cross-appointed to U of T\u2019s department of physics. \u00a0<\/p>\n
They were right.\u00a0<\/p>\n
PhD candidate Vasilii Pustovoit at work at his desk at CITA (photo by Polina Teif)<\/p>\n
Once the data was available through satellite observations and ground-based experiments, Bond and\u00a0Efstathiou were able to determine what the universe is made of \u2013 its geometry, its age and the structure.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t just get there. We got there exquisitely,\u201d says Bond. \u201cThe remarkable thing is that one after another, it fell in place and we did learn what we said we might.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bond\u2019s influence extends far beyond the cosmic microwave background \u2013 he has helped shape the very language of modern cosmology.\u00a0He coined the terms \u201cgastrophysics\u201d (how gas in the universe transforms into planets, stars and everything else around us) and the \u201ccosmic web\u201d (the web of filaments and vast sheets of dark matter that give the universe its structure).\u00a0The latter, he says, can be best understood by the idea that, thanks to gravity, \u201cthe rich get richer and the poor get poorer,\u201d meaning the denser regions pull in more matter while emptier regions hollow out further. The result is a structure in three-dimensions that looks, at the largest scale, like an enormous spider\u2019s web.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He has also played a key role in classifying dark matter as hot, warm, or cold \u2013 with cold, dark matter ultimately proving to dominate our universe.<\/p>\n
A cosmic calling\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dick Bond, left, chats with PhD candidate Nathan Carlson (photo by Polina Teif)<\/p>\n
After completing his undergraduate studies in math, physics and chemistry at U of T, Bond headed to the U.S. to the California Institute of Technology to attend graduate school, where he earned both master\u2019s and doctoral degrees. His PhD thesis supervisor was William Alfred Fowler, who won the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on theoretical and experimental studies of nuclear reactions in the formation of the chemical elements in the universe. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Bond went on to complete postdoctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley before landing a faculty position Stanford University, where he was a professor of physics.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Despite his success south of the border, he returned to U of T in 1985 after being recruited by CIFAR (the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research), then just two years old, and the nascent Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA), a nationally supported research centre based at the university. The decision would ultimately have a big impact on both the field and the estimated 200 postdoctoral researchers he and his CITA colleagues would help train in the years to come (it also afforded him the opportunity to join his mother, then in her 70s, on stage in Convocation Hall when she received a U of T degree).\u00a0<\/p>\n
Shortly after he returned to U of T, one of his first moves was to convene a major international meeting at CITA, bringing together cosmic microwave background theorists and experimentalists\u00a0 \u201cIt wasn’t really a thing before then,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was kind of scattered. This brought all of the people together.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was an early sign of the vision he would realize over the next two decades. As CITA\u2019s director from 1996 to 2006, Bond shaped the institute into what it is today: a place where theorists and experimentalists work side by side to answer some of the biggest, thorniest questions about the universe.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He says that CITA, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, has put Canada on the cosmology and astrophysics map. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have taken a subject which was not very well represented when CITA started \u2013 and now Canada is one of the major countries in the world doing research in theoretical astrophysics,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s quite a thing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Coming full circle<\/p>\n
From left: Do\u011fa Tolgay, Vasilii Pustovoit, Dick Bond, Nathan Carlson and Thomas Morrison (photo by Polina Teif)<\/p>\n
As a mentor, Bond takes an engaged approach with his graduate students, offering direction and staying involved as each one progresses at their own pace. His goal is to push them towards independent thinking \u2013 developing the critical and creative skills he considers the most important part of graduate education.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I most value is if they push back and say, ‘No, no, it might be this way.’ That’s the best possible thing that can happen,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s the only way that young people develop. It\u2019s when they can see how to see.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Thomas Morrison, a graduate student working with Bond on the early physics of the universe, says it took time to adjust to how Bond communicates. \u201cIt happens very quickly and it\u2019s a lot of information all at once,\u201d he says, comparing it to learning a new language.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he’s challenged me a lot to do things that are working at a deeper level than I otherwise would have. So, going beyond just scratching the surface and getting down to the root cause of things \u2013 that’s given me a better understanding that I can apply more generally.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
At 75, Bond says his best work is still ahead. He is thinking now about entropy and quantum information \u2013 a framework he believes can, under one set of principles, describe everything in the universe, from its smallest components to its largest structures.<\/p>\n
He also plans to write a book on the subject \u2013 and he hopes that it has the same effect on others that Gamow\u2019s did on him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI had ambitions at the beginning of trying to understand everything,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I think I’m actually getting someplace.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
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