Marcel Grossmann Award for Michael Kramer

MPIfR Director awarded for his fundamental contributions to relativistic pulsar astrophysics

The Marcel Grossmann meetings were founded in 1975 by Remo Ruffini and Abdus Salam with the aim of reviewing developments in gravitation and general relativity with major emphasis on mathematical foundations and physical predictions. They have been organized in order to provide opportunities for discussing recent advances in gravitation, general relativity and relativistic field theories, emphasizing mathematical foundations, physical predictions and experimental tests. The objective of these meetings is to elicit exchange among scientists that may deepen our understanding of spacetime structures as well as to review the status of ongoing experiments aimed at testing Einstein's theory of gravitation either from the ground or from space. They are organized at different locations and take place every three years.

At this years meeting, held from July 12 to 18 in Paris, Prof. Michael Kramer from the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie (MPIfR) will receive the Marcel Grossmann Award for his research work in pulsar astrophysics, notably for the first detection of spin-orbit precession in a binary pulsar.

According to Einstein's General Relativity the rotational axis of a pulsar moving in the gravitational field of a companion continously changes its orientation (geodetic precession). Michael Kramer was able to detect such changes for the first time using Effelsberg radio observations of pulsar PSR B1913+16 (Hulse-Taylor pulsar: Physics Nobel Prize 1993 for Russell Hulse and Joseph Taylor for the discovery). In the following years, Michael Kramer as part of an international team of astronomers utilized the newly found double pulsar system, PSR J0737-3039 (Fig. 2), to conduct the so far best tests of Einstein's Theory of Gravity for strong gravitational fields.

Michael Kramer obtained his PhD in 1995 with a study of pulsars and neutron stars at MPIfR. After his time as an MPG Otto-Hahn fellow at Berkeley, he returned to the MPIfR. In autumn 1999, he became a lecturer for Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester. From 2005 he was head of the pulsar group at Jodrell Bank and since 2006 full professor for astrophysics at Manchester University. Since March 2009 he is also director at the MPIfR in Bonn, holding a joint position in Bonn and Manchester. He is responsible for the Effelsberg observatory with the 100-m radio telescope which he used to detect the effects of geodetic precession in PSR B1913+16.

Other laureates of the Marcel Grossmann Award at this year's meeting are Christine Jones and Iaan Einasto (Individual Awards) and the "Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifique" in France (Institutional Award). Laureates from previous years include e.g. John Archibald Wheeler (1988), Stephen Hawking (1991), Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1994), Riccardo Giacconi (2000) and Joachim Trümper (2006). "It is a great honor to stand in line with such excellent scientists who have received the Marcel Grossmann Award before", says Michael Kramer.