Andrzej Udalski | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1957-01-22)January 22, 1957 Łódź, Poland |
| Alma mater | University of Warsaw |
| Known for | OGLE project |
| Awards | Prize of the Foundation for Polish Science (2002) Dan David Prize (2017) Tycho Brahe Prize (2018) Karl Schwarzschild Medal (2018) Strait of Magellan Prize (2020) Copernicus Award (2024)[1] |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Astronomy,Astrophysics |
| Institutions | University of Warsaw |
Andrzej Jarosław Udalski (born 22 January 1957 inŁódź,Poland) is aPolishastronomer andastrophysicist, and director of the Astronomical Observatory of theUniversity of Warsaw. He is also head of the Department of Observational Astrophysics at Astronomical Observatory, the head and project manager of theOptical Gravitational Lensing Experiment, and editor of the quarterlyjournalActa Astronomica.
He graduated from the Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw in 1980. In that same year, he was employed at the Astronomical Observatory of the University of Warsaw. He received his Ph.D. in 1988 and then completed a two-year Postdoctoral Research Associate atYork University inToronto, Ontario,Canada.
He has authored or co-authored nearly 400 scientific papers. In 1996, he was honored by the Prime Minister for outstanding scientific achievements. In 2002, he won thePrize of the Foundation for Polish Science (the so-called "Polish Nobel").[2] In 2009, he received a 2.5 million Euro grant from the programIdeas of the European Research Council that aims to support innovative research projects. In 2012, he became the recipient of theCommander's Cross of theOrder of Polonia Restituta. He was also awarded the prestigiousDan David Prize (2017) for pioneeringtime-domain astronomy,[3][4] theKarl Schwarzschild Medal (2018) as well as theTycho Brahe Prize (2018)[5] for his contributions to astronomy.
In April 1992, he launched theOGLE project, which aims at finding extrasolar planets usinggravitational microlensing technique. Since then Udalski and his team made many important discoveries. Thanks to this project focusing on monitoring over a billion stars, he has discovered and characterized as many as a million variable stars of all types, expanding the knowledge by orders of magnitude. He was a pioneer of the use of gravitational microlensing which enabled him to exclude the presence ofdark matter in the form of regular low-luminosity astrophysical bodies in theMilky Way halo. He was also one of the first ones to use the transit technique of extra-solar planet detection – the first transiting planets came mostly from the OGLE survey. Among other significant discoveries of the OGLE project are the detection of the first merger of a binary star, first Cepheid pulsating stars in the eclipsing binary systems, unique Nova systems, large Solar Systemdwarf planet candidates, many interestingquasars and galaxies. OGLE made many important contributions to the studies of the structure of the Milky Way and neighboring galaxies and calibration of the cosmic distance scale.[6] In 1995-1996, he took part in the construction of the Warsaw Telescope atLas Campanas Observatory inChile. In 2001, he built a wide-angle mosaicCCD camera with more than 65 million light-sensitive elements. Along with the OGLE team, he is also a co-discoverer of 14 extra-solar planets discovered by the technique ofgravitational microlensing.
In 2020, astronomers from the University of Warsaw’s OGLE team at the Astronomical Observatory discovered the smallestrogue planet in theMilky Way galaxy thus confirming that low-mass rogue planets are common in the Milky Way, that there may be billions of them, and that they can be detected and characterized by observations from the Earth's surface.[7]
