Summer 2000 -- Vol. 17, No. 1

FACES OF PENN STATE

Alexander Wolszczan
Evan Pugh Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics

As the first person to discover planets outside our solar system, Alexander Wolszczan has the credentials to boost his ego or skew his perspective.

After all, Wolszczan's research, confirmed in 1992, set the stage for the ongoing planet-hunting rush among
astronomers.  As a result, he's one of the most referenced and revered radio astronomers in the world.  He's also one of the most well-respected, because of his personality and professionalism.

With his accomplishments and resumé, he could act like a prima donna, but he prefers persistence--and nothing displays that approach better than his initial discovery of extrasolar planets.

In early 1990, with the 1,000-foot Arecibo Observatory in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, broken, undergoing repair for a series of cracks, and locked in a fixed position, Wolszczan provided the impetus that led to his important discovery.   He wanted to scan the sky for short-period pulsars, burned-out remains of supernovae that emit strong, periodic bursts of energy.  It was a time-consuming task and not usually a priority at the observatory.

"Alex wanted hundreds of hours of time," Arecibo director Michael Davis said.  "It was the kind of project that could never have gotten on our telescope if we had not been immobilized."

After a time-consuming analysis of the data, Wolszczan's search detected two new pulsars.  One, a rare binary pulsar, did not have planets but did help refine tests of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity against other theories of gravity.   The other pulsar acted strangely, and eventually was discovered to be the home of two planets and another "moon-like" object.

The discoveries alone do not define Wolszczan.

He needed nearly two years to interpret his data and prove his discovery to the scientific community, and that
persistence shows up as much in his approach to education and to life as it does in his laboratory.

He's quite popular among colleagues, students, and in his homeland, Poland, where he has earned celebrity status.

He sometimes takes students on trips to Puerto Rico to work at the Arecibo Observatory and he always supports the importance of classroom and personal interaction for science education.

He relies heavily on computer analysis and online communication for his research, but he's wary of those things minimizing an educator's role in the classroom.

"My only concern is that in the rush to get everything automated and online, we might leave the human touch behind," Wolszczan said.

 "There is a need for human interaction in education."

-- By Steve Sampsell

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