Millimeter and Submillimeter Astronomy
Professor Dr. Karl Martin Menten
03. October 1957 — 30. December 2024
On December 30, 2024, Professor Dr. Karl Martin Menten, Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society and director at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, died at the age of 67.
Karl Menten was an outstanding scientist, a invaluable mentor, and a great person. We miss him very much and look back with gratitude on the time we spent together.
The research team uses the radio-, millimeter- and submillimeter range of the electromagnetic spectrum to observe various phenomena in the universe. A particular area of concentration is the formation of new stars and the physical conditions and the chemistry of the molecular clouds in which this process happens, in our Milky Way, in other galaxies and even in the early Universe.
Further research is being conducted on radio emission of stars and the radiation of circumstellar molecular envelopes around stars in the late stages of their evolution, cosmic masers, as well as the galactic center..
The research team has led the construction of the sub-millimetre telescope APEX in Chile. APEX was officially inaugurated on September 26th 2005 and has since made many contributions to submillimeter astronomy.
Other areas of interest include magnetic fields in the Milky Way, demographics of nearby galaxies and galaxy evolution at high redshift.