Reinhard Genzel

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Reinhard Genzel
Born March 24, 1952 (1952-03-24) (age 56)
Bad Homburg, Germany
Residence Germany
Nationality German
Fields Astrophysicist
Institutions Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics
Alma mater University of Bonn
Known for submillimetre astronomy

Reinhard Genzel (born 24 March 1952 in Bad Homburg vor der Höhe, Germany) is a German astrophysicist.

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[edit] Life

Genzel studied physics at the University of Bonn and did his PhD in 1978 at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy. He then worked at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts and was Miller Fellow from 1980 until 1982, and was also Professor at the University of California, Berkeley from 1981. He joined the scientific council of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft in 1986, becoming director of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching and lectured at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. He has been an honorary Professor at the University of California, Berkeley since 1999.

[edit] Work

Reinhard Genzel studies infrared- and submillimetre astronomy. He was the first researcher to track the motions of stars at the centre of the Milky Way and show that they were orbiting a very massive object, probably a black hole[1]. This work has been followed up by the group of Andrea Ghez, who have performed a similar study with the Keck Telescope.

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[edit] Membership of scientific societies

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