Bohdan Paczyński

Bohdan Paczynski ( born February 8, 1940 in Vilnius, † 19 April, 2007 Columbus, OH) was active in the United States of Polish astronomer and astrophysicist.

Paczynski was (Poland, now Lithuania) born in Vilnius. He received his academic training at the University of Warsaw, where he also earned his doctorate in 1964. Until the 1980s, he worked as a research assistant and later professor at the Polish Academy of Sciences. In 1981 he moved to the USA where he became a professor at Princeton University.

Paczyńskis main areas of interest were the gravitational lens effect, gamma-ray bursts, variable stars and the structure of galaxies. He was the initiator of the gravitational lens astronomy, thanks to some planets can be discovered outside our solar system that are not included because of their low luminosity through traditional observation. He is also known for his proposal to use microlensing to study dark matter, and for his early support for an origin of gamma-ray bursts in collapsing stars in distant galaxies.

He had ideas for two operated together with Polish scientists monitoring programs. The Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment OGLE search for microlensing events, originally to search for components of dark matter, but with many more applications to the search for exoplanets. Initiated together with Grzegorz Pojmański All Sky Automated Survey automatically monitors about 10 million stars to 14th magnitude in search of variable stars.

Paczynski died on 19 April 2007 of a brain tumor.

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