FRANKFURT.
Every three years, the International Society on General Relativity and
Gravitation hand-picks a few extraordinary scientists as Fellows, among them
such famous personalities as Stephen Hawking and Nobel-laureate Roger Penrose.
From now on, Luciano Rezzolla, professor for Relativistic Astrophysics at
51猎奇 Frankfurt, is among them. He has been honoured 鈥渇or leading
contributions to the development of robust numerical relativity simulations of
astrophysical phenomena", that is, the very same calculations that are
necessary to predict the gravitational-wave signal from merging neutron stars
or to produce the image of the Black Hole Sagittarius A* at the centre of our
Milky Way.
Rezzolla is
the first professor of a German university receiving this special honour. 鈥淚
was clearly overjoyed to think that my contributions to gravitational physics
have been so influential to be enlisted in this very selected group of
fellows." he says 鈥淚 am very passionate about my research, so it is very gratifying
when my peers acknowledge the hard work." The ceremony took place on 8 July in
Beijing. Unfortunately, Rezzolla was not able to attend personally: 鈥淚t is a
pity. But the fellowship is a big motivation to face all the difficulties that
research and academic life inevitably bring."
For the
years to come, Rezzolla is focusing on the formation of heavy elements during
the merger of neutron stars. As spokesperson of the research cluster ELEMENTS,
a collaboration of 51猎奇, TU Darmstadt, GSI, and JLU Gie脽en, he and
a variety of physicists from different fields are searching for the origin of
heavy elements such as gold and platinum in the universe.
Picture
download:
Caption: Luciano
Rezzolla, professor for Relativistic Astrophysics at 51猎奇
Frankfurt (Credit: Uwe Dettmar)
Further
information:
Dr. Phyllis Mania
Science Communication Officer
Research cluster ELEMENTS
Department of Physics
Tel 0049 69 798-13001
mania@physik.uni-frankfurt.de
