Prof. Dr Robert Rosner

Professor Dr Robert Rosner is senator of the Helmholtz Association for the Research Field Structure of Matter. He was visiting professor at Stanford University for the 2009/2010 academic year and is currently the William E. Wrather Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago.

He studied at Brandeis University, USA, where he obtained a Bachelor in physics, followed by his PhD in physics at Harvard University. He was chairman of the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics of the University of Chicago from 1991 to 1997. From 1997 to 2002, he was director of the Center for Astrophysical Thermonuclear Flashes in Chicago, which is financed by the US Department of Energy. In 2001 he became a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and held different positions at the Argonne National Laboratory (ANL): chief scientist from 2002 to 2005 and director of the ANL from 2005 to 2009. In 2004 he was a Rothschild Visiting Professor at the Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge and from 2006 to 2009 president of the University of Chicago/Argonne LLC.

Rosner is a member of the American Physical Society, and his past and present activities in numerous scientific organisations include, for example, membership of the external advisory committee of the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory near San Francisco and of the Steering Committee of the National Task Force on High Energy Density Physics. He is also a member of the expert advisory committee of the German Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Lindau and chairman of the Strategic Research Advisory Board of the Austrian Institute of Technology.