A Salina native is honored with a prestigious astronomy award.

Professor John F Hawley, along with Professor Steven A Balbus, were both honored Tuesday as 2013 Shaw Laureates in Astronomy. The duo discovered that magnetorotational instability leads to turbulence.

Hawley is a professor at the University of Virginia while Balbus is a University of Oxford professor.

The Shaw Prize is an annual award first presented by the Shaw Prize Foundation in 2004. Established in 2002 in Hong Kong, it honours living “individuals, regardless of race, nationality and religious belief, who have achieved significant breakthroughs in academic and scientific research or application, and whose work has resulted in a positive and profound impact on mankind.”

Hawley is a native of Salina. His brother James is a pastor who sill resides in a Salina. Another brother Steve is a former space shuttle astronaut who now teaches at the University of Kansas.