Enrico Costa (physicist)

Enrico Costa ( born 1944 in Sassari, Sardinia ) is an Italian astrophysicist, noted for studies of gamma ray bursts (GRB ).

Life

Costa grew from 1954 in Rome and studied physics there. He participated in rocket experiments with X-ray detectors at the IAS ( Istituto di Astrofisica Spaziale ) in Rome for promotion at Giulio Auriemma. From 1976, he joined the IAS and initially undertook balloon experiments. Later he was involved in BeppoSAX, the Italian X-ray astronomy satellite ( with Dutch participation and support ESA ), which operated from 1996 to 2003. Costa in 1981 was part of the team of Livio Scarsi, which proposed the construction of the satellite. On the satellite Phoswich a detector system ( PDS) by Filippo Frontera for discovering Gamma Ray Bursts (GRB ) was used (Gamma Ray Burst Monitor, GRBM ).

On February 28, 1997 it was after localization by SAX first time the X-ray afterglow of a GRB can be observed, followed a little later by the optical afterglow ( William Herschel and Isaac Newton Telescopes, La Palma). Two months later, at a subsequent observation in the radio range, the redshift can be determined and demonstrated so directly that GRBs are extragalactic origin in another GRB.

In 1999 he contributed to the X-ray detector for the Italian X-ray / gamma-ray satellite AGILE, which started in 2007. He also developed X-ray polarimeter.

In 2011 he was awarded with Gerald Fishman the Shaw Prize for her research on gamma -ray bursts. In 2010 he received the Premio Frontera with Enrico Fermi.

His wife Alda worked with him as an electronics expert. The couple has two children.