in recognition of her outstanding contributions to the study of nutations of the Earth's axis of rotation and their implications for the structure of the Earth’s core

Since her PhD, defended in 1986 on the modelling of global deformation of an ellipsoidal rotating Earth with a liquid core, Veronique Dehant considerably broadened her research filed, working on the effect of fluid envelopes (oceans, atmosphere, liquid core) on the Earth rotation and the Chandler Wobble, on precession and nutations of the Earth axis of rotation in space in response to Earth's internal structure, on the effect of mantle convection and mantle rheology on Earth rotation, and on the sructure of the core. Recently, she extended this research to planet Mars.

Veronique Dehant has published to date about 130 papers, more than 50 in refereed international journals. Because of her well-known contributions on rotational dynamics of planet Earth (and Mars), she has been awarded several international prizes. She is a member of the  Academia Europaea. An asteroid has been named Dehant in her honor.

Veronique Dehant is presently president of the geodesy section of the AGU, head of the "Special Bureau" for the core at the Global Geophysical Fluid Centre of IERS (International Earth Rotation Service), secretary of the IAG section five, president of the IAU working group on nutation theory, vice president of the IAU commission for Earth rotation, and a member of several other international working groups. In Belgium, she is member of several national committees for research assessment. She is Principal Investigator of the Geodesy experiment NEIGE of the future Mars Net Lander mission of the European Space Agency.

Veronique Dehant has also teaching duties, in particular as a professor at the Catholic University of Louvain, and she is a very active scientist and is considered as a leader by her peers in her speciality.

Anny Cazenave