Bohdan Paczyński

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Bohdan Paczyński or Bohdan Paczynski (born 8 February 1940) is a Polish astronomer, a leading scientist in theory of the evolution of stars.

He was born in Wilno, Lithuania. He was educated at the Warsaw University, and after his initial career in Poland he moved to the US in 1981. He is The Lyman Spitzer Jr. Professor of Astrophysics at Princeton University.

Paczyński is the initiator of Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE, led by Andrzej Udalski of Warsaw University Observatory) and All Sky Automated Survey (ASAS, created together with Grzegorz Pojmański).

His new methods of discovering cosmic objects and measuring their mass by using gravitational lenses gained him international recognition, and he is acknowledged for coining the term microlensing. He was also an early proponent of the idea that gamma-ray bursts are at cosmological distances.

His research concentrates on stellar evolution, gravitational lensing and gravitational microlensing, variable stars, gamma-ray bursts, and galactic structure.

On June 29, 2005 he was honoured with the title of doctor honoris causa by Wrocław University in Poland.

In January 2006 he was awarded Henry Norris Russell Lectureship of the American Astronomical Society, for his highly original contributions to a wide variety of fields including advanced stellar evolution, the nature of gamma ray bursts, accretion in binary systems, gravitational lensing, and cosmology. His research has been distinguished by its creativity and breadth, as well as the stimulus it has provided to highly productive observational investigations.