Friday, May 4, 2012
Dr. Alexander Wolszczan, an Evan Pugh Professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University and a director of its Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds, will wrap up the AAAòÀÙs 2011-12 lecture series Friday, May 4 when he speaks on òÀÜThe Astronomical Future of Humankind.òÀÝ The free public lecture is at 6:15 p.m. in the Kaufmann Theater of the American Museum of Natural History.
òÀÜThe fact that long-term survival of the human race is by no means guaranteed shouldnòÀÙt prevent us from considering the astronomical phenomena that may affect it,òÀÝ Wolszczan tells Eyepiece. òÀÜSuch considerations are also important for research related to life in the universe and its persistence in the face of cosmic evolution.
òÀÜI will review the most relevant astrophysical phenomena that may influence life on Earth, such as stellar evolution, motion of the solar system around the galaxy, stellar explosions, galaxy collisions and asteroid strikes, and discuss our chances to survive them.òÀÝ
Wolszczan is an astrophysicist whose research interests focus on exoplanets. HeòÀÙs also worked on topics in relativistic gravitation, pulsars, brown dwarfs and the physics of the interstellar medium. Wolszczan is best known for his discovery, in 1992, and the subsequent confirmation, of the first planets orbiting a star other than the Sun. In addition, heòÀÙs a discoverer and co-discoverer of many pulsars and several planets around giant stars.
Wolszczan received a doctorate in physics in 1975 from the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Poland, and has taught there. He also held positions at the Max Planck Institut fuer Radioastronomie in Bonn, Germany, the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center operated by Cornell University, and Princeton University before coming to Penn State 20 years ago.
Wolszczan was the recipient of òÀÜThe Best of WhatòÀÙs New’òÀÝ Grand Award of Popular Science magazine in 1994, the Penn State Faculty Scholar Medal for Outstanding Achievement in 1995 and the Beatrice M. Tinsley Prize of the American Astronomical Society in 2000. In 2001, he was awarded the Marian Smoluchowski Medal by the Polish Physical Society and received an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Award for senior U.S. scientists. He was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2011. Wolszczan was featured on one of the series of 16 postage stamps issued in Poland in 2001 to commemorate the Polish millennium.