Aleksander Wolszczan

Aleksander Wolszczan
Aleksander Wolszczan
Born	(1946-04-29) 29 April 1946 (age 70) Szczecinek, Poland
Nationality	Polish
Fields	Astronomer
Alma mater	Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń
Known for	Discovery of the first extrasolar planets and pulsar planets
Notable awards	Beatrice M. Tinsley Prize (1996)

Aleksander Wolszczan [alɛkˈsandɛr ˈvɔlʂt͡ʂan] (born 29 April 1946 in Szczecinek, Poland) is a Polish astronomer. He is the co-discoverer of the first extrasolar planets and pulsar planets.

Wolszczan sat for an M.Sc. in 1969 and a Ph.D. in 1975 at the Nicolaus Copernicus University. In 1982, he moved to the U.S. to work at Cornell and Princeton universities. Later he became an astronomy professor at Pennsylvania State University. From 1994 to 2008, he was also a professor at the Nicolaus Copernicus University. He is a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

Working with Dale Frail, Wolszczan carried out astronomical observations from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico which led them to the discovery of the pulsar PSR B1257+12 in 1990. They showed in 1992 that the pulsar was orbited by two planets. The radii of their orbits are 0.36 and 0.47 AU respectively. This was the first confirmed discovery of planets outside the Solar System (as of 11/03/2016 there are 3,403 known such planets).

In 1996, Wolszczan was awarded the Beatrice M. Tinsley Prize by the American Astronomical Society, and in 2002, he was pictured on a Polish postage stamp.