Rolf Kudritzki is a force of nature in Hawaiian guise. He has been an incredible and inspiring powerhouse of the ORIGINS Cluster and especially the MIAPbP for over a decade and his enthusiasm and open-mindedness continue to enrich our work and lives.
His work on blue supergiants, stellar winds, and stellar metallicities in galaxies established extragalactic stellar astronomy as a new research field and shaped our understanding of stellar evolution and the universe at large. With his extraordinary career that bridges both theoretical insights and observational expertise, he inspires researchers worldwide.
Beyond his scientific contributions, Rolf has been a mentor, collaborator, and friend to many of us. His dedication to building global scientific communities, in particular through his leading roles at the University of Munich and the University of Hawai‘i, he has left a lasting imprint on the astrophysics community.
What some of Rolf's peers say:
“Rolf is a deeply inspiring person, he has such rare character treats in a sense that he is empathetic while be a leader, he is well respected by senior scientists as well as students. And this over decades. For me he a clear role model how a scientist should be, creative, intelligent while still maintaining an immense humanity. On top of this he just a cool dude.“ (Jochen Weller)
„He hasn’t stopped writing papers and wearing his Hawaiian T-shirts! He’s forever young!“ (Hans Zinnecker)
„Rolf is a remarkable person, researcher, and mentor. His curiosity and drive to understand the physics of the universe in all its facets have always inspired me to do better.“ (Richard Anderson)
„Rolf has been the best advisor I could have hoped for. Working with him has been an absolute privilege. I am deeply grateful for his support and for the countless lessons (both scientific and personal) that I have learned along the way.“ (Eva Sextl)
Rolf Kudritzki: a short vita
Rolf Kudritzki studied physics and at the TU Berlin and obtained his PhD in astronomy there in 1973. He became a professor at the Christian-Albrechts University of Kiel in 1979 and became the director of the Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Ludwig-Maximilians University (LMU) in Munich in 1982. After being the dean of the Physics Department there, he moved to the University of Hawai’i, where he served as Director of the Institute for Astronomy (IfA) from 2000 to 2010. Since 2012 he is the founding director of the Munich Institute for Astro-, Particle and Biophysics (MIAPbP), an initiative of the Excellence Cluster ORIGINS, which is operated jointly by both Munich universities, LMU and Technical University of Munich (TUM). Rolf Kudritzki returned to Munich in 2017 and holds a honorary professorship at LMU in addition to his position as MIAPbP director. He is also still affiliated with the IfA in Hawai’i and uses the telescopes on Mauna Kea for his work in addition to the telescopes at ESO.
Rolf Kudritzki received in 2009 the Karl Schwarzschild Medal and the Humboldt Research Award. He is a scientific member of the Max Planck Society, the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences and the Arts, and the German National Academy of Sciences "Leopoldina". On May 1, 2023, an asteroid was named after him: (353903) Kudritzki.
