Professor Mareki Honma, Director of NAOJ Mizusawa VLBI Observatory has been awarded the 2025 (the 71st) Nishina Memorial Prize.

The award recognizes his research achievements in “Contributions to imaging the shadow of supermassive black holes with very long baseline interferometry.” Professor Honma played a central role in observing the “event horizon” of black holes. He was instrumental in establishing a Japanese observational research group early on and led the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project in collaboration with researchers around the world. He also spearheaded the development of an optical transmission system to integrate the ALMA telescope array into the EHT, contributing significantly to the success of the observations. Furthermore, he led the Japanese team in achieving major results by introducing a novel data analysis method using sparse modeling to visualize black hole shadows.

Professor Honma comments, “I am deeply honored and delighted to receive the 2025 Nishina Memorial Prize. This achievement is not something I accomplished alone, but rather it is thanks to the support of my collaborators and the staff involved in the EHT project and related organizations such as NAOJ. I sincerely thank all those involved. Encouraged by this recognition, I intend to further advance my research, and I would be grateful for continued support from everyone.”

The Nishina Memorial Prize commemorates the distinguished service of the late Dr. Yoshio Nishina. It is awarded to researchers for outstanding achievements in Japan related to physics or one of its many diverse applications.