Aleksander Wolszczan

Aleksander Wolszczan was born in 1946. After the studies, he started to work as a researcher on the University of Nicolaus Copernicus. Wolszczan started to interest in radioastronomy in 1973, when he was in Bonn, Germany on a scientific visit, because there's situated the biggest radiotelescope in Europe.

In 1982 Wolszczan moved to the United States. Initially, he worked on the Cornell University, later in Princeton and then as a professor on he Philadelphia Academy. He belonged to a group of researches, working on the largest radiotelescope in the world, located in Arecibo, Puerto Rico.

Exactly in Arecibo, he discovered a pulsar PSR B1257+12, which has an own planetary system. "Nature" informed about in 9th January 1992 about a discovery of planets, which not belong to the Solar System. Initially, some people didn't agreed with his interpretation, so he published an issue to remove all of the doubts.

More than four years later, Wolszczan was placed on the list of 25 discoverers of the Universe, published by "Astronomy". That discovery was compared with discovers of Uran, Neptun and Pluton. July 1999 brought Wolszczan an acknowledgement of "Nature" for one of the sixteen fundamental works, published by the magazine. Wolszczan was nominated from 26 pretenders for the Inhabitant of Torun of the XX century.