Wolfgang Wild

This article deals with the nuclear physicist. For the German sports presenter of the same name, see Wolfgang Wild (journalist) .

Wolfgang Wild (born September 20, 1930 in Bayreuth ) is a German nuclear physicist and politician. After professorships at the Free University of Berlin and the Technical University of Munich , he was President of the TU Munich from 1980 to 1986. From 1986 to 1989 he was the first Bavarian Science Minister. He then headed the German Space Agency for four years .

education and profession

Wild studied physics at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich . After receiving his doctorate in 1955 on the droplet model of the atomic nucleus and two-body forces , he initially worked as an assistant to Heinz Maier-Leibnitz at the TH Munich. In 1957 he moved to the University of Heidelberg and together with the later Nobel Prize winner Hans Daniel Jensen investigated the extremely high stability of atomic nuclei at certain nucleon numbers. His habilitation in 1960 was followed the following year by a call to the Free University of Berlin, where he received an extraordinary professorship. In November of the same year he took over the chair for theoretical physics at the Technical University of Munich.

Honorary positions

In addition to his research and teaching activities, Wild was involved in various committees of academic self-government. In 1970 he became chairman of the structural advisory board for the re-establishment of the University of Bayreuth and, after its establishment, was its vice-president from 1973 to 1976. From 1979 to 1981 he was a Bavarian member of the Science Council and after his election as President of the Technical University of Munich on October 1, 1980 he was a member of the University Rectors' Conference .

Political offices

After the state elections on October 12, 1986, the Bavarian Prime Minister Franz Josef Strauss brought him into his cabinet for the newly founded State Ministry for Science and Art . Even under Strauss' successor Max Streibl , Wild initially remained in this position.

On June 20, 1989, he moved to the newly founded German Space Agency in Bonn as General Director . There he represented German interests in space travel until his retirement in 1993.

Awards

• Bavarian Order of Merit
• Federal Cross of Merit 1st class
• Honorary Senator of the University of Bayreuth
• Honorary professor at the Technical University of Munich
• 1989: Albertus Magnus Medal , City of Regensburg
• 1991: Commander's Cross of the Order of Gregorius (for his services to the development of the University of Eichstätt)

Fonts

• Core forces and core structure. Part 1, 2, In: Physikalische Blätter 1977, pp. 298, 356, Part 1 , Part 2 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Wolfgang Wild in the catalog of the German National Library