The nominating institution Heidelberg Univerity on the breakthrough:
The second catalogue of Gaia has let to a revolution on astronomy. Gaia’s astrometric measurements with microarcsecond accuracies, supplemented by high-precision photometry has changed our understanding of the evolution of our Milky Way. Practically all fields of astronomy have profited from the Gaia data leading to about five scientific papers per calendar day. Anthony Brown is the Head of the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium.