One of the pioneers of the Canadian aerospace industry, Okanagan Centre Member Bruce Aikenhead began nearly 40 years in aerospace in 1955 with systems engineering of flight simulators for aircrew training including the research and development simulator for the AVRO "ARROW." He was hired by NASA to develop training aids for the astronauts of Project Mercury.

Upon his return to Canada he continued in space-related projects, which included "International Satellites for Ionospheric Studies," the Canadian geosychronous satellite "Hermes" and then the "Canadarm" for the NASA space shuttle. As Manager of the Canadian astronauts in 1984 he arranged equipment and training for Marc Garneau's orbital flight. Following the formation of the Canadian Space Agency, he became Director-General of the Canadian Astronaut Program. He retired in 1993.

Many Canadians have developed an interest in the wonders of astronomy thanks to his popular books on the subject. His guide for backyard astronomers, Nightwatch, is one of many books he has written for both children and adults.

As a commentator for CBC radio’s Quirks and Quarks, an author and a columnist, he has unveiled a world of discovery for thousands of amateur astronomers. Asteroid (5272) Dickinson is named in his honour.

An orphan, in high school Prof. Douglas was refused admission to a small science club solely based on the fact that she was a woman. She graduated at the top of her class and received a scholarship to McGill University. She was awarded a civilian M.B.E. by His Majesty's Government in 1918 in recognition of her work in the War Office Department of Statistics.

After her McGill master's degree in 1921, she studied at Cambridge under Arthur Eddington and earned her Ph.D. in astrophysics at McGill in 1925, the first person to receive such a degree from a Québec university.

Between 1939 and 1958 she served as Dean of Women at Queen's University. In 1943 she became the first female president of the RASC. In 1967 the National Order of Jewish Women named her as one of 10 Women of the Century. She was also a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in Britain. It was largely due to her work that the Kingston Centre of the RASC was formed in 1961.

In 1988 the asteroid 3269 was named Vibert Douglas in her honour. The Vibert Douglas Patera is a volcano on Venus, located at 11.6° S, 194.3° E. (JRASC Vol. 82, p.309-311))

Astronomer at the David Dunlap Observatory, Richmond Hill, Ontario. To mark almost half a century of research in the field of astronomy, during which she has gained an international reputation.

(This is a promotion within the Order.) For her research in astronomy over a period of more than forty years. Dr. Sawyer Hogg served as President of the RASC and was a founder of the Canadian Astronomical Society CASCA. Asteroid (2917) Sawyer-Hogg is named in her honour.

• Companion (1976)
• Appointment June 23, 1976
• Investiture October 20 1976
• Deceased : January 28, 1993

Heinz Edgar Lehmann, OC FRSC was a German born Canadian psychiatrist best known for his use of chlorpromazine for the treatment of schizophrenia in the 1950s.

Born in Berlin, Germany, he was educated at the University of Freiburg, the University of Marburg, the University of Vienna, and the University of Berlin. He emigrated to Canada in 1937.

In 1947, he was appointed the Clinical Director of Montréal's Douglas Hospital. From 1971 to 1975, he was the Chair of the McGill University Department of Psychiatry.

From 1969 to 1972, he was one of the five members of the LeDain Commission, a royal commission appointed in Canada to study the non-medical use of drugs. He was an advocate for decriminalization of marijuana.

He was ahead of his time in that he supported research in the use of the active ingredient psilocybin to alleviate anxiety. In 1973, he was a member of the Nomenclature Committee of the American Psychiatric Association that decided to drop homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, i.e. to depathologize it.

In 1970, he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He was inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame in 1998. In 1999, the Canadian College of Neuropsychopharmacology established the Heinz Lehmann Award in his honor, given in recognition of outstanding contributions to research in neuropsychopharmacology in Canada.

As a member of the RASC Montréal Centre, Heinz Lehmann completed the "Messier Club" observing program in June 1960. (JRASC Vol. 93, p.156)

Full professor in the physics department, Faculty of Sciences and Engineering and director of the atomic and molecular physics laboratory at Université Laval. Physician renowned in Canada and abroad for his scientific publications. He was among those promoting the development of Quebec’s first astronomical research telescope.

• Officer (1981)
• Appointment June 22, 1981
• Investiture October 21, 1981
• Deceased: May 20, 2005

Jaymie Matthews, member of the Vancouver Centre and Associate Professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of British Columbia is well-known to members of the Society in particular for his work on the MOST space telescope project, which was the subject of the Ruth Northcott Memorial Lecture at the 2005 General Assembly in Kelowna, B.C.

A friend of the Society, as well as a member, Dr. Matthews also congratulated the RASC on making his work of publicizing Canadian astronomy easier.

• Officer 2006
• Appointment October 5, 2006
• Investiture February 22, 2008

Dr. Jim Peebles is a native of Winnipeg and a graduate of the University of Manitoba (B.Sc. in physics, 1958). He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1962, and currently is a professor of physics at Princeton. In the mid-1960s, he and his colleagues predicted that thermal electromagnetic radiation from the very early Universe should be detectable by radio telescopes, that this radiation should be isotropic, and that it should have the spectrum of a black body only a few degrees above absolute zero. Coincidentally, about the same time (in 1965), Penzias and Wilson of the Bell Telephone Laboratories accidentally discovered this radiation. Dr. Peebles has investigated characteristics of the radiation and the clustering of galaxies. He has calculated the universal abundances of helium and other light elements, demonstrating agreement between Big Bang theory and observation. His two books on physical cosmology had a significant impact in convincing physicists that the time had come to study cosmology as a respectable branch of physics. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1982.

Professor Peebles was the joint recipient of the The Nobel Prize in Physics 2019, "for contributions to our understanding of the evolution of the universe and Earth's place in the cosmos", with one half awarded to him "for theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology", and the other half going jointly to Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz "for the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star". Professor Peebles' Cosmology’s Century: An Inside History of Our Modern Understanding of the Universe was scheduled to appear later in 2020.

• Companion 2020
• Appointment November 27, 2020
• Investiture pending

Dr. Sara Seager is an astrophysicist and planetary scientist at MIT. Her science research focuses on theory, computation, and data analysis of exoplanets. Her research has introduced many new ideas to the field of exoplanet characterization, including work that led to the first detection of an exoplanet atmosphere. Professor Seager's space instrumentation group is focusing on "ExoplanetSat," a 3U CubeSat capable of high-precision pointing, with the science goal of detecting small transiting exoplanets orbiting bright, sun-like stars. The prototype is intended to be the first of a planned fleet of nanosatellites, aimed to demonstrate the graduated growth of a constellation as a new paradigm for space science missions. In addition to being the PI of ExoplanetSat, Professor Seager is co-leading CommCube, a platform to demonstrate novel small satellite space communication technology, and is involved in the MIT-Harvard REXIS instrument on NASA's OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission.

Before joining MIT in 2007, Professor Seager spent four years on the senior research staff at the Carnegie Institution of Washington preceded by three years at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. Her Ph.D. is from Harvard University. Professor Seager is on the advisory board for Planetary Resources and the Rosalind Franklin Society. Professor Seager is the 2012 recipient of the the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Prize in the Physical Sciences, the 2007 recipient of the American Astronomical s Helen B. Warner Prize, and is an AAAS Fellow. She has been recognized in the media by Popular Science Magazine's Fifth Annual Brilliant Ten in 2006, Discover Magazine's "Best 20 under 40" in 2008, Nature's Top Ten in 2011, and Time Magazine's 25 Most Influential in Space in 2012.

• Officer 2020
• Appointment November 27, 2020
• Investiture pending

Gordon Merritt Shrum OC OBE MM was a Canadian scientist, teacher and administrator. His education at Victoria College at the University of Toronto was interrupted by the Great War. Shrum was in Lester Pearson's Canadian Officers Training Corps unit. Their company commander was Vincent Massey. Shrum was a gunner and fought at the Battle of Vimy Ridge. He received the Military Medal during the war.

As a doctoral student in 1923 he was the first to replicate Kamerlingh Onnes's 1908 Nobel Prize–winning feat of liquefying helium. Later that year he was awarded his Doctorate in physics for studies of the hydrogen spectrum. As a post-doctoral fellow he was the first to identify the prominent green line in the Aurora Borealis as due to oxygen.

In 1925, he joined the University of British Columbia (UBC) where he taught physics. In 1935 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. From 1938 to 1961, he was the head of the Physics Department. From 1957 to 1961, he was the Dean of Graduate Studies and served on the Senate of the University.

In 1944, he was appointed a director of the BC Research Council. In 1952, he offered Har Gobind Khorana, who won the 1968 Nobel Prize in Medicine, a job in Vancouver, where he stayed until 1960.

In 1958, he was chairman of a royal commission investigating the BC Power Commission. After retiring from UBC, he was appointed head of BC Electric by Premier Bennett and was involved with the Peace River hydro project. This project comprised the construction of the Bennett Dam, which impounds Williston Lake Reservoir, and the construction of a 2730 MW powerhouse (at that time the largest in the world) named after him: the G.M. Shrum Generating Station. He stayed at BC Hydro until 1972. He was also involved in establishing Simon Fraser University and was its first chancellor from 1963 to 1968.

In 1975, he was appointed Director of the Vancouver Museum and Planetarium Association. He represented Vancouver on the RASC National Council in 1932, 1949-51, and 1955-58.

Bill Tutte was an outstanding expert in cryptanalysis, and a key innovator in the fields of graph and matroid theory, with a world-wide reputation. During the Second World War he was on staff at Bletchley Park, and while in his mid-twenties he was able to reverse engineer the German encryption machines solely from intercepted messages. Modest and retiring, he was an inspired teacher and a mathematician whose research potential did not dissipate upon reaching his fifth decade, which was reflected in his receipt of many honours. He served on the RASC executive as National Librarian 1959-1960. Asteroid (14989) is named in his honour.

• Officer (2001)
• Appointment November 15, 2000
• Investiture October 17, 2001
• Deceased : May 2, 2002

Former director of the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory, he is a world renowned astronomer who has contributed immensely to our understanding of the evolution of the galaxy. In constant demand as a lecturer throughout the world, he has produced a wealth of heavily-cited research ideas and encourages excellence in both students and colleagues. Asteroid (4230) van den Bergh is named in his honour.

• Officer (1994)
• Appointment April 13, 1994
• Investiture March 1, 1995

In the course of a distinguished career, he contributed to the general development of physics in Canada and, in particular, at the University of British Columbia. Twenty-five years after he co-authored an historic paper on the gravitational collapse of stars, the theoretical prediction it contained was verified by the discovery of pulsars, one of the great astrophysical discoveries of the 20th century.

• Officer (1994)
• Appointment April 13, 1994
• Investiture October 19, 1994
• Deceased : April 24, 2000