Aleksander Wolszczan

Aleksander Wolszczan [alɛkˈsandɛr ˈvɔlʂt​͡ʂan] ( listen) (born April 29, 1946 in Szczecinek, Poland) is a Polish astronomer. He is the co-discoverer of the first extrasolar planets and pulsar planets. Wolszczan was educated in Poland (MSc in 1969 and received his PhD in 1975 at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń), He moved in 1982 to the U.S. to work at Cornell and Princeton University. Later he became an astronomy professor at Pennsylva... more

Aleksander Wolszczan [alɛkˈsandɛr ˈvɔlʂt​͡ʂan] ( listen) (born April 29, 1946 in Szczecinek, Poland) is a Polish astronomer. He is the co-discoverer of the first extrasolar planets and pulsar planets. Wolszczan was educated in Poland (MSc in 1969 and received his PhD in 1975 at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń), He moved in 1982 to the U.S. to work at Cornell and Princeton University. Later he became an astronomy professor at Pennsylvania State University, where he currently teaches. From 1994 to 2008 he was also a professor at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. 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 is orbited by two planets. Their orbits are 0.36 and 0.47 AU respectively. This was the first confirmed discovery of planets outside the... less