Profile

Rudy Wijnands is Professor at the University of Amsterdam.  After concluding his PhD research in 1999 at the same university, he held prize fellowships at the Center for Space Research of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, USA) and in the astronomy group of the University of St. Andrews (Scotland, UK). He rejoined the Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy in 2004. In 2006, he received the Bruno Rossi prize, the most prestigious award of the High-Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society. He is an ERC Starter Grant and NWO-TOP1 Laureate.  In 2017 he became full professor at the Anton Pannekoek Institute.  

Research and Teaching

Rudy studies the extreme physics that occur in and around neutron stars and black holes. He performs those studies by looking how those extreme objects react to the accretion of matter. His long-term goals are to understand the accretion processes involved and the behavior of matter at extreme densities as seen in neutron stars. In his research, he uses data obtained using the largest telescopes in space as well as on Earth. In addition, he is pionering new methods to observe cosmological near-UV radiation (300-350 nm)  using a ground-based observatory to study fast (time scales less than a few days) cosmic explosions, such as the prompt emission of supernovae, gamma-ray bursts, and electromagnetic afterglows of gravitational wave events. He teacher BSc and MSc Physics & Astronomy program,s and in particular observational courses using the Anton Pannekoek Observatory and with telescopes on La Palma. He is the care taker of this observatory. 

Keywords

Neutron stars, dense matter, accretion, X-ray pulsars, near-UV, cosmic explosions, gravitational waves