The Astronomische Gesellschaft (AG), the German professional society for astronomy and astrophysics, has named its prizewinners for 2024: The AG will award Prof. Anton Zensus with the Karl Schwarzschild Medal.
Germany’s highest award for astronomers of high scientific standing honours his leading role in the further development of radio astronomical technology and observation methods with unprecedented angular resolution and sensitivity as well as his contributions to extend radio interferometry to ever decreasing wavelengths (into the mm regime) and increasing baselines. Radio interferometry with very long baselines (VLBI) has developed into a key observational method, particularly due to the influence of Anton Zensus and his research group (incorporation of the IRAM (institut de radioastronomie millimétrique), APEX (Atacama pathfinder experiment) and ALMA (Atacama large millimeter/submillimeter array) telescopes into VLBI, establishment of the global millimeter VLBI array (GMVA), founding chairman of the event horizon telescope (EHT) board).
In addition to astrophysics, VLBI is now also widely used in the fields of astrometry and geodesy. These developments and outstanding worldwide collaborations have made extraordinary astronomical observations possible. The unique images from the EHT project, which show the supermassive black holes in the elliptical galaxy Messier 87 and in the centre of our Milky Way, caused a worldwide sensation and opened up new avenues for AGN and jet research.
After studying in Cologne, Münster and Bonn, he researched and taught at the California Institute of Technology, the National Radio Observatory in the USA, the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) in Bonn and the University of Cologne and is now Director at the MPIfR and head of the research department “Radio Astronomy/VLBI”.
The research unit members congratulates Anton Zensus for receiving the prestigious Schwarzschild Medal and is proud to have Prof. Zensus in the research unit!
The medal was formally awarded in a ceremony at the annual meeting of the AG (Tuesday, 10 September) right before Prof. Zensus delivered the famous Schwarzschild-lecture, one of the highlights of each AG annual meetings.
