Josefin Larsson Awarded the Göran Gustafsson Prize for Younger Scientists
Astrophysicist Professor Josefin Larsson at KTH has been awarded the Göran Gustafsson Prize in Physics. The prize amounts to SEK 8.1 million and highlights researchers at the forefront of international science.
Larsson is recognized for her groundbreaking research on supernovae and the compact objects formed when massive stars explode. By combining observations across the entire electromagnetic spectrum with advanced models, her work contributes to a deeper understanding of some of the universe’s most extreme phenomena. Her research group has, for example, played a central role in analyses of Supernova 1987A and helped identify the first electromagnetic signal from its compact remnant through observations with the James Webb Space Telescope.
“It is, of course, very exciting and an honor to receive the prize. The funding will be used to hire more people in my group, which will allow us to take advantage of the opportunities that arise from new observations, including those from the James Webb Space Telescope,” says Larsson.
Background and Career
Josefin Larsson was born in 1980 in Malmö. She studied physics at Lund University and earned her master’s degree in 2005, followed by doctoral studies at the University of Cambridge, where she completed her PhD in astrophysics in 2008.
After her doctorate, she held a postdoctoral position as an Oskar Klein Fellow at Stockholm University, where she deepened her work in observational astronomy. Since 2012, she has been based at KTH, where she is a Professor of Astrophysics, a Wallenberg Scholar, and a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Current Research and Future Goals
In her research, Larsson studies, among other things, the material that remains long after a supernova has exploded. She works with data from both ground‑ and space‑based telescopes and analyzes radiation to map the geometry of the explosions and the compact objects that form.
Together with her team, she also develops methods for 3D reconstruction of supernovae, a technique that opens new possibilities for visualizing how these explosions unfold and how elements are dispersed into space. She is also interested in searching for unusual signals in the extensive archives of X‑ray observations built up over decades, which hold significant untapped potential for deepening our understanding of supernovae and compact objects.
“One of the things that makes supernovae so fascinating is that they connect many different areas within astronomy and physics. It’s also particularly exciting every time you look at new observations for the first time. Sometimes you discover unexpected things that no one had predicted,” she adds.
About the Göran Gustafsson Prize
The Göran Gustafsson Prizes are awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and are among the largest research prizes in Sweden. Each laureate receives SEK 8.1 million, of which SEK 300,000 is a personal award and SEK 7.8 million is allocated to research activities over three years. The prize aims to provide long‑term support to young researchers in five fields: medicine, molecular biology, chemistry, physics, and mathematics. This year’s physics prize is awarded to Josefin Larsson for her “innovative research on exploding stars, linking observations to fundamental astrophysical theories.”