Professor Martin Asplund (FAA) (born April 29, 1970) is a Swedish-Australian astrophysicist and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. He has made credible [1] and sometimes controversial contributions in the field of astronomy. His models of the levels of the heavy elements, oxygen, carbon, neon and nitrogen in the solar spectrum have challenged scientific understanding of the sun and the rest of the cosmos. [2]
Asplund completed his PhD at Uppsala University in 1997 and became an assistant professor at the same university in 2001. He worked at the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, the Australian National University from 2002 to 2007, where he was promoted to full professor. In 2007, he was appointed as Director of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in 2007 and at the time was one of the youngest directors within the Max Planck Society. [3] From 2011 to 2020, he was employed at the Australian National University as a Laureate Fellowship recipient, the highest funding award from the Australian Research Council. [4]
Rashid Alievich Sunyaev is a German, Soviet, and Russian astrophysicist of Tatar descent. He got his MS degree from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) in 1966. He became a professor at MIPT in 1974. Sunyaev was the head of the High Energy Astrophysics Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and has been chief scientist of the Academy's Space Research Institute since 1992. He has also been a director of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany since 1996, and Maureen and John Hendricks Distinguished Visiting Professor in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton since 2010. In February 2022, he signed an open letter from Russian scientists and science journalists condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Martin John Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow, is a British cosmologist and astrophysicist. He is the fifteenth Astronomer Royal, appointed in 1995, and was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, from 2004 to 2012 and President of the Royal Society between 2005 and 2010. He has received various physics awards including the Wolf Prize in Physics in 2024 for fundamental contributions to high-energy astrophysics, galaxies and structure formation, and cosmology.
The Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science is a formally independent non-governmental and non-profit association of German research institutes. Founded in 1911 as the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, it was renamed to the Max Planck Society in 1948 in honor of its former president, theoretical physicist Max Planck. The society is funded by the federal and state governments of Germany.
The Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (MPA) is a research institute located in Garching, just north of Munich, Bavaria, Germany. It is one of many scientific research institutes belonging to the Max Planck Society.
The Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics is part of the Max Planck Society, located in Garching, near Munich, Germany. In 1991 the Max Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysics split up into the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, the Max Planck Institute for Physics and the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics. The Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics was founded as sub-institute in 1963. The scientific activities of the institute are mostly devoted to astrophysics with telescopes orbiting in space. A large amount of the resources are spent for studying black holes in the Milky Way Galaxy and in the remote universe.
The Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics is a Max Planck Institute whose research is aimed at investigating Einstein's theory of relativity and beyond: Mathematics, quantum gravity, astrophysical relativity, and gravitational-wave astronomy. The institute was founded in 1995 and is located in the Potsdam Science Park in Golm, Potsdam and in Hannover where it closely collaborates with the Leibniz University Hannover. Both the Potsdam and the Hannover parts of the institute are organized in three research departments and host a number of independent research groups.
The Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie is a research institute of the Max Planck Society (MPG). It is located in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany near the top of the Königstuhl, adjacent to the historic Landessternwarte Heidelberg-Königstuhl astronomical observatory. The institute primarily conducts basic research in the natural sciences in the field of astronomy.
Sami Khan Solanki is director of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS), director of the Sun-Heliosphere Department of MPS, a scientific member of the Max Planck Society, and a Chair of the International Max Planck Research School on Physical Processes in the Solar System and Beyond at the Universities of Braunschweig and Göttingen.
The Gruber Prize in Cosmology, established in 2000, is one of three prestigious international awards worth US$500,000 awarded by the Gruber Foundation, a non-profit organization based at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
Reinhard Genzel is a German astrophysicist, co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, a professor at LMU and an emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy", which he shared with Andrea Ghez and Roger Penrose. In a 2021 interview given to Federal University of Pará in Brazil, Genzel recalls his journey as a physicist; the influence of his father, Ludwig Genzel; his experiences working with Charles H. Townes; and more.
Simon David Manton White, FRS, is a British-German astrophysicist. He was one of directors at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics before his retirement in late 2019.
Govind Swarup was a pioneer in radio astronomy. In addition to research contributions in multiple areas of astronomy and astrophysics, he was a driving force behind the building of "ingenious, innovative and powerful observational facilities for front-line research in radio astronomy".
Thomas K. Henning is a German astrophysicist. He was a director at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy between 2001 and 2024. Henning is an expert in the field of star and planet formation.
Shashikumar Madhusudan Chitre FNA, FASc, FNASc, FRAS was an Indian mathematician and astrophysicist, known for his research in Astronomy and Astrophysics. The Government of India honored him, in 2012, with Padma Bhushan, the third highest civilian award, for his services to the sciences.
Rafael Rebolo López is a Spanish astrophysicist. In October 2013 he became the director of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias. He is a professor at the Spanish National Research Council. In 2002 Rebolo became an external professor at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and a member of the Max Planck Society.
Amina Helmi is an Argentine astronomer and professor at the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.
Duncan Ross Lorimer is a British-born American astrophysicist. He is a professor of physics and astronomy at West Virginia University, known for the discovery of the first fast radio burst in 2007.
Paola Caselli is an Italian astronomer and astrochemist known for her research on molecular clouds, star formation and planet formation, and the astrochemistry behind the materials found within the Solar System. She is the director of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics near Munich in Germany. She also holds an honorary professorship at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
Immo Appenzeller is a German astronomer.
Karin Lind is a Swedish astronomer whose research involves spectroscopy of stars in order to determine their chemical composition, and the use of this information to understand the origin of heavy elements in supernova explosions and the way radiation and energy moves through stellar atmospheres. Her work has in particular clarified the roles of Big Bang nucleosynthesis and supernovas in producing the quantities of lithium observed in early stars. She is an associate professor in the Department of Astronomy at Stockholm University, and a participant and survey builder in the GALAH collaboration, which uses the Anglo-Australian Telescope's HERMES instrument to map the chemical compositions of stars in the Milky Way.
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