Richard Wielebinski

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Richard Wielebinski (born February 12, 1936 in Pleszew , Poland ) is a Polish-born Australian radio astronomer. He is emeritus director of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) as well as author and editor of specialist publications on topics from the fields of radio continuum , pulsars , cluster galaxies and galactic and intergalactic magnetic fields .

Live and act

Wielebinski was born three years before the Germans attacked Poland. His father taught mathematics and bookkeeping at a vocational school, his mother was an elementary school teacher. The family was expelled from their homeland in the province of Poznan in 1939 and spent ten years in camps in the area of ​​Poland declared Generalgouvernement by Germany. In 1949 they finally ended up in a camp for “displaced persons” in the British zone and emigrated to Australia. So that Richard Wielebinski, as a 14-year-old immigrant at the time, would not be forced to take up work immediately in accordance with the regulations at the time, his parents chose an area in which schooling was compulsory up to the age of 16. The parents found work on the island of Tasmania in southern Australia . So Wielebinski was finally able to start school in Hobart at the age of 14 . He then studied there too, from 1960 in the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge with his doctoral supervisor, the astronomer Martin Ryle . From 1963 to 1969 he researched and taught at the University of Sydney .

In 1969 he was appointed director of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, where the 100-meter radio telescope Effelsberg , Eifel was under construction, which was to remain the world's largest fully articulated radio telescope for 30 years. After its completion in 1972, the initially high interest in pulsars shifted in the direction of measuring magnetic fields and polarizations at wavelengths in the centimeter range. Continuous improvements to the receivers have made it possible to achieve continuously more precise results at ever shorter wavelengths. The computer-aided VLBI correlation with the results of the very large array telescope system (VLA) in New Mexico , USA (consisting of 27 parabolic antennas) made it possible to generate radio maps with an accuracy of previously unimaginable orders of magnitude.

However, the Effelsberg radio telescope was not optimally designed for the measurements in the sub-millimeter range, which are becoming more interesting due to the results . When the planning of a 30-meter telescope for sub-millimeter observations could not be implemented in Germany, Richard Wielebinski successfully campaigned for the MPIfR to set up the institute for the French Center national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) in 1979 in Grenoble Radio astronomy in the millimeter range (IRAM) based. IRAM realized and operates five parabolic antennas south of Grenoble ( Plateau de Bure ) and the 30 m telescope in Spain ( Pico Veleta ). Another telescope in the USA ( Heinrich Hertz Telescope on Mount Graham ) was operated by the MPIfR together with the University of Arizona for observations in these wave ranges. Since these instruments are particularly sensitive to water vapor in the atmosphere, they are all located on mountains at altitudes between 2500 and 3400 meters.

In the 80s the already great international interdependencies of radio astronomy intensified and Richard Wielebinski took over the chairmanship and vice-chairmanship of the radio astronomy commission at the world umbrella organization International Union of Radio Science (URSI) for six years . After that he turned more and more to his original research topics: magnetic fields in the universe and dust and gas in galaxies. In addition to the existing MPI working group for pulsars , the research group he heads for magnetic fields was set up, which is still counted among the world's leaders in this special field.

In 2004 Richard Wielebinski retired as director of the MPIfR, but remained close to both the institute and his field and is currently engaged in international cooperation in radio astronomy, particularly through his research professorship in China. As a member of an IAU working group, he is also concerned with the history of radio astronomy, which he has known from his own experience for almost 50 years.

Awards

Books as editor

  • Cosmic Magnetic Fields , with Rainer Beck. Springer-Verlag, 2005
  • The Magnetized Interstellar Medium , with Bülent Uyaniker and Wolfgang Reich. Copernicus, 2004
  • Radio Studies of Galactic Objects, Galaxies and AGNs , with JL Han, XH Sun, J. Yang. In: Acta Astronomica Sinica Supplement , vol. 44, 2003
  • Pulsar Astronomy - 2000 and Beyond , with M. Kramer and N.Wex. Astronomical Society of Pacific, Conference Series 2000
  • Galactic and Intergalactic Magnetic Fields , with R. Beck and PP Kronberg. Springer-Verlag, 1990
  • Pulsars - 13 Years of Research on Neutron Stars , with W. Sieber. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1981
  • Structure and Properties of Nearby Galaxies , with Elly M. Berkhuijsen. Springer-Verlag, 1978

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Wielebinski, Richard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Australian radio astronomer, emeritus director of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy
DATE OF BIRTH February 12, 1936
PLACE OF BIRTH Pleszew , Poland