Freimann
Professor Michael Wiescher, has been named an Alexander von Humboldt
Fellow by the Alexander
von Humboldt Foundation.
The foundation was established by the Federal Republic of Germany to promote international cooperation in research. This prestigious fellowship will allow Wiescher to study the nuclear reactions leading to the formation of an isotope of iron, 60Fe, which has been found in sediments on the deep-ocean floor. This isotope is thought to be related to a supernova a few million years ago in our neighborhood of the Milky Way galaxy.
Wiescher has made numerous contributions to the determination of key nuclear reaction rates for the understanding of stellar evolution and the synthesis of the elements in the universe. He is particularly well known for the use of novel techniques involving low energy ion beams in measuring nuclear reactions determining the lifetime and evolution of stars. He also pursued the use of radioactive ion beams in measuring important reactions relevant in explosive astrophysical environments. These techniques will be implemented at the future U.S. Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL) and the Future Radioactive Ion Beam (FRIB) facility. For his work Professor Wiescher received several awards, including the prestigious Hans Bethe Prize of the American Physics Society.
Wiescher is director of the Joint
Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics (JINA), a collaboration between
the University of Notre Dame, Michigan State University, and the University
of Chicago, to address a broad range of experimental, theoretical, and
observational questions in nuclear astrophysics.
The foundation is named after Baron Alexander von Humboldt, a Prussian naturalist and explorer. Baron von Huboldt explored much of Central and South American in the late 18th Century and early 19th Century.
