The Gruber Foundation proudly presents the 2014 Cosmology Prize to Jaan Einasto, Kenneth Freeman, Brent Tully and Sidney van den Bergh for their pioneering contributions to the understanding of the structure and composition of the nearby Universe.
Their work laid the foundations of Near Field Cosmology. They clarified the properties of nearby galaxies -- dwarfs, spirals, lenticulars and ellipticals -- through studies of their morphology, stellar and gaseous content. The early recognition of the role of dark matter, and of the filamentary clustering of galaxies together with setting the distance scale of galaxies was crucial in setting the cosmological context for our current understanding of the evolution of galaxies and large-scale structure.