Aleksander Wolszczan - Scientific Career

Scientific Career

Wolszczan was educated in Poland (MSc in 1969 and received his PhD in 1975 at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń), He moved in 1982 to the U.S. to work at Cornell and Princeton University. Later he became an astronomy professor at Pennsylvania State University, where he currently teaches a life in the universe class at 2:30 to 3:45 in 060 Willard building. From 1994 to 2008 he was also a professor at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. He is a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

Working with Dale Frail, Wolszczan carried out astronomical observations from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico which led them to the discovery of the pulsar PSR B1257+12 in 1990. They showed in 1992 that the pulsar is orbited by two planets. The radii of their orbits are 0.36 and 0.47 AU respectively. This was the first confirmed discovery of planets outside the Solar System (over seven hundred are known today).

In 1996, Wolszczan was awarded the Beatrice M. Tinsley Prize by the American Astronomical Society, and in 2002, he was pictured on a Polish postage stamp.

In 2003 Maciej Konacki and Wolszczan determined the orbital inclinations of the two pulsar planets, showing that the actual masses are approximately 3.9 and 4.3 Earth masses.

In 2008 "Gazeta Prawna" disclosed that in 1973-1988 he was a collaborator of the communist Polish Secret Sevice, codenamed "Lange", which Wolszczan confirmed. This was accepted by rector of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń.