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.
Read more about this topic: Aleksander Wolszczan
Famous quotes containing the words scientific and/or career:
“For, the advantages which fashion values, are plants which thrive in very confined localities, in a few streets, namely. Out of this precinct, they go for nothing; are of no use in the farm, in the forest, in the market, in war, in the nuptial society, in the literary or scientific circle, at sea, in friendship, in the heaven of thought or virtue.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“From a hasty glance through the various tests I figure it out that I would be classified in Group B, indicating “Low Average Ability,” reserved usually for those just learning to speak the English Language and preparing for a career of holding a spike while another man hits it.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)