02.07.2010 —

The speaker of the Excellence Cluster “Origin and Structure of the Universe” was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit at the end of June 2010. Prof. Dr. Stephan Paul was presented with the Award of Merit by the Bavarian Minister of Science Dr. Wolfgang Heubisch. In the honorific speech the outstanding achievements of Stephan Paul were honoured, which he has attained in different scientific institutions and as initiator and leader of the Universe Cluster. He has “rendered outstanding services to science and research and thus to the common good in an exemplary manner.”

Prof. Paul was born in Bonn and has held the Chair for Experimental Physics (E18) since 1997. He has been the speaker of the Excellence Cluster Universe since 2006. He initiated the Excellence Cluster along with Prof. Dr. Andreas Burkert of the Ludwig-Maximilian University (LMU) within the framework of the Excellence Initiative of the German Federation and the German Laender. Approximately 200 experts from the fields of astrophysics, nuclear physics and particle physics belong to this research association. The aim of the association is to study the beginning, the structure and different epochs of the Universe. The large partner institutions include the four Max Planck Institutes and the European Southern Observatory in addition to the LMU.

Stephan Paul has made a name for himself particularly in hadron physics and in the field of particle physics with neutrons. He began his scientific career with physics studies in Bonn. After his doctoral research at the Enrico Fermi Institute of the University of Chicago, he went to the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg in 1983. A few years after the conferral of his doctorate, Stephan Paul took on an offer from CERN and accepted a position as a research fellow. In 1992 he returned to the MPI for Nuclear Physics as a scientific leader before he finally came to the TUM in 1997.

Yet another prominent founding member of the Cluster Prof. Rashid Sunyaev, director at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics was also honoured with the Federal Cross of Merit on the same day.