Walter Oelert

Walter Oelert at a public lecture (2015).

Walter Oelert (born July 14, 1942 in Dortmund ) is a German physicist . In 1995 a working group under his leadership at CERN produced anti-hydrogen for the first time.

Oelert, who moved to Hamburg at a young age, studied physics in Hamburg and Heidelberg, and graduated in Hamburg in 1969. He received his doctorate in 1973 in Hamburg ( The (p, t) reactions on the even samarium isotopes ). He was a post-doctoral student at the University of Pittsburgh . In 1976 he moved to the Jülich Research Center . Oelert completed his habilitation in 1987 at the Ruhr University in Bochum ( core structure and reaction mechanisms investigated at alpha-particle transitions ) and taught elementary and particle physics there as an associate professor from 1997 . At the same time he was employed at the Research Center Jülich, where he did research especially at the COZY cooler synchrotron . He has worked regularly at the CERN research center since 1985, on the Low Energy Antiproton Ring (LEAR) and later on the Antiproton Decelerator . After retiring from the Ruhr University in Bochum, Oelert accepted the offer to join the Institute for Physics at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz , where he is managed as an employee.

He headed the working group that made the first observation of anti-hydrogen in the PS210 experiment . 11 ± 2 anti-hydrogen atoms with a kinetic energy of approx. 1.2  GeV were produced. A research goal of Oelert is a comparative precision spectroscopy of anti-hydrogen and hydrogen. The Extra Low Energy Antiproton Ring (ELENA) is planned as the successor to the ATRAP experiment .

Oelert was accepted into the Polish Academy of Learning (PAU) in Cracow in 2005. In 2009 he received the Merentibus Medal from the University of Krakow for the University of Bochum.

Web links

• Former website at Forschungszentrum Jülich ( memento from February 23, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
• Interview with Walter Oelert In: Der Spiegel. 3/1996.
• Interview with Walter Oelert at CernCourier November 25, 2005
• Dieter Grzonka, Walter Oelert, Jochen Walz: Experiments with the "anti-world". In: Physics Journal. 5, No. 3, March 2006, pp. 37-43. (PDF, 0.9 MB) with biographical information

Individual evidence

1. ↑ kfa-juelich.de: Website of the PS210 experiment
2. ^ The first experimental proof of (hot) antihydrogen: G. Baur et al .: Production of Antihydrogen. In: Phys. Lett. B 368, 1996, p. 251.
3. ↑ THE ELENA PROJECT: PROGRESS IN THE DESIGN
4. ^ Members of the PAU - Department III: Science and Technology. Polska Akademia Umiejętności, accessed June 12, 2017 (Polish). 
5. ↑ Press release from CERN ( Memento of the original dated November 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
6. ↑ page of the University of Krakow (engl.)