Awardees 2024
The German Astronomical Society (AG), the German national professional association for astronomy and astrophysics, has named its awardees for 2024: Anton Zensus is awarded the Schwarzschild Medal, Willem van Straten receives the Astrophysical Software Award , the Ludwig Biermann Award goes to Matthias Kluge, Matti Dorsch is awarded the Doctoral Thesis Award, the Bruno H. Bürgel Prize goes to Dirk Lorenzen, the Hans-Ludwig Neumann Prize honours Oliver Schwarz, and Maria Weiss received the Jugend-forscht Special Prize.
Professor Anton Zensus, director at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, is awarded the Karl Schwarzschild Medal 2024. Germany's highest award for astronomers of high scientific standing honors his leading role in the further development of radio astronomical observation methods with very high angular resolution and sensitivity. After studying in Cologne, Münster and Bonn, he researched and taught at the California Institute of Technology, the National Radio Observatory, the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn and the University of Cologne. Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) has developed into a key observational technique, particularly due to the influence of Anton Zensus and his research group. In addition to astrophysics, it is now also widely used in the fields of astrometry and geodesy. These developments and an outstanding worldwide cooperation made extraordinary astronomical observations possible. The unique images from the Event Horizon Telescope project, which show the supermassive black holes in the elliptical galaxy M87 and in the center of our Milky Way, caused a worldwide sensation and opened up new avenues for research into active galactic nuclei.
Professor Willem van Straten receives the AG 2024 Astrophysical Software Award for his significant role in the development of the world-leading software package PSRCHIVE for the analysis of astronomical pulsar data. The open-source C++ library implements a wide range of algorithms for use in pulsar timing, scintillation studies, polarimetric calibration, visualization, etc. Since its first release in 2004, PSRCHIVE has been significantly enhanced in its functionality and has led to numerous publications. For example, the detection of the gravitational wave background published by collaborations from Europe, Australia, China, India and North America in the summer of 2023 is based on data analysis with PSRCHIVE. Van Straten studied in Canada and completed his doctorate at Swinburne University in Australia before working as a postdoctoral researcher at ASTRON in the Netherlands, the University of Texas, as a Senior Lecturer at Swinburne University, and as an Associate Professor at Auckland University of Technology. He recently joined Manly Astrophysics and co-founded Fourier Space, where he leads the development of pulsar signal processing software for the Square Kilometre Array Observatory.
The German Astronomical Society honors Dr. Matthias Kluge, currently a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) in Garching, with the Ludwig Biermann Award. He received his doctorate at the University Observatory of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München on cluster galaxies with highest honour in 2020 and later moved to the MPE's High Energy Group as a postdoc. With his research, Kluge has constrained formation processes of Intracluster Light, an elusive and faint stellar component in galaxy clusters. He deals with optical follow-up observations of galaxy clusters and groups discovered with eROSITA and, in parallel, with Euclid Early Release data. Kluge has shown that he achieves outstanding scientific results with very deep photometry in the optical and infrared as well as with integral field spectroscopy. In the two large consortia, eROSITA and Euclid, he worked on different topics and published as first author in each case.
Dr. Matti Dorsch receives the Doctoral Thesis Award 2024 for his doctoral thesis entitled "Tracing the diversity of hot subdwarf evolution Surface composition, magnetic fields, and populations", which he successfully completed at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg in 2023. In it, he succeeded for the first time in detecting long-sought magnetic fields of a certain class of hot stars. He developed new analytical techniques that point the way for future large spectroscopic surveys such as 4MOST. His spectroscopic, photometric and kinematic analyses and results are of high accuracy and are important for the further development of the research field. In addition to numerous publications, including several as first author, he has successfully obtained observation time, including at the Hubble Space Telescope.
The Bruno H. Bürgel Prize 2024 goes to astrophysicist and science journalist Dirk Lorenzen, who has been committed to popularizing astronomy and space travel among the general public for decades. In radio reports (especially for "Forschung aktuell" on Deutschlandfunk), lectures and several books, he covers a wide range of topics: from the basics of astronomy, to current observation tips and events, to developments in technology and space travel. As the author of the daily column »Sternzeit« on Deutschlandfunk radio, he also frequently takes up questions by listeners. The opportunity to help shape the program in this way encourages listeners to engage with astronomical content.
The Hans-Ludwig Neumann Prize 2024 honours Prof. Dr. Oliver Schwarz for his achievements in teaching astronomy in schools. Oliver Schwarz heads the Institute for Didactics of Physics and the observatory at the University of Siegen since 2008. He has combined didactic training and school teaching in a practical way using both astronomical observations and experiments. He is the author of several schoolbooks and has written numerous articles for »Wissenschaft in die Schulen«. Since 2011, he has also been the editor of the journal »Astronomie und Raumfahrt im Unterricht«, the only didactic journal on astronomy in Germany. He has played a key role in shaping the important educational work of the German Astronomical Society by setting up the Education Committee.
For her work on exoplanets, Anna Maria Weiss from Einstein Gymnasium in Neuenhagen near Berlin won the national competition and 1st prize in geo- and space sciences in the national competition "Jugend forscht" (youth's research)and received the special prize awarded by the German Astronomical Society for work in the field of astronomy. In her project, Anna Maria Weiss was showed that the object TOI1147b is an exoplanet orbiting its parent star in a highly elliptical orbit. In addition to the ground-based detection of the new exoplanet using space telescopes, she also characterized its internal properties.
The award ceremonies will take place during the annual meeting of the German Astronomical Society in Cologne from September 9-13, 2024.
Contact:
Janine Fohlmeister (Press officer of the German Astronomical Society)
Phone: +49 / (0) 331 / 7499-802
E-Mail: pressereferentin@astronomische-gesellschaft.de
