Bohdan Paczyński
Bohdan Paczyński (born February 8, 1940 in Vilnius , † April 19, 2007 in Princeton ) was a Polish astronomer and astrophysicist working in the USA .
Paczyński was born in Vilnius ( Poland , now Lithuania ). He received his academic training at the University of Warsaw , where he also obtained his doctorate in 1964. Until the 1980s he worked as a research assistant and later a professor at the Polish Academy of Sciences . In 1981 he moved to the USA, where he became a professor at Princeton University . In 1974 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina and in 1984 a member of the National Academy of Sciences .
Paczyński's main areas of interest were gravitational lensing , gamma-ray bursts , variable stars and the structure of galaxies . He is considered to be the initiator of gravitational lens astronomy, thanks to which, for example, planets outside the solar system can be discovered which, due to their low luminosity, cannot be captured by traditional observation. He is also known for his suggestion to use microlensing to study dark matter and for his early advocacy of the origin of gamma-ray bursts in collapsing stars in distant galaxies, i.e. outside of our galaxy.
He was the source of ideas for two monitoring programs run together with Polish scientists. The Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment OGLE searches for microlensing events, originally to search for components of dark matter, but with many other applications up to the search for exoplanets . The All Sky Automated Survey , initiated together with Grzegorz Pojmański , automatically monitors around 10 million stars up to the 14th magnitude in search of variable stars.
Paczyński died on April 19, 2007 of complications from a brain tumor.
Honors
Prices
- 1981 Karl Schwarzschild Medal of the Astronomical Society
- 1987 Eddington Medal from the Royal Astronomical Society
- 1992 Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics
- 1997 Henry Draper Medal
- 1999 Gold Medal from the Royal Astronomical Society
- 2000 Bruno Rossi Prize
- 2000 Marian Smoluchowski Medal
- 2002 Bruce Medal from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
- 2006 Henry Norris Russell Lectureship
Named after him
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Paczynski, (1986). Gamma-ray bursters at cosmological distances, Astrophysical Journal Letters, Volume 305, 1986, L43-L46.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Paczyński, Bohdan |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Polish astronomer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 8, 1940 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Vilnius |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 19, 2007 |
| Place of death | Princeton |