Radioactivity: A Natural Phenomenon

Michael Wiescher is the Freimann Professor of Physics at the University of Notre Dame. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Münster, Germany in 1980. After several years as postdoc and lecturer at Ohio State University, the University of Mainz, Germany, and Caltech, he accepted in 1986 a faculty position at the University of Notre Dame, where he developed a program in nuclear astrophysics using stable and radioactive beams. Dr. Wiescher's research interests are in low-energy nuclear physics, with focus on nuclear astrophysics and nuclear applications. His research is being pursued mainly at the Notre Dame Nuclear Science Laboratory and at several other national and international research institutions. Between 2003 and 2015, Wiescher served as director of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics of the University of Chicago, Michigan State University, and Notre Dame. For the following decade he was director of the Institute for Structure and Nuclear Astrophysics at Notre Dame. He has published approximately 500 scientific and review papers and has served on the organizing and advisory committees of more than 100 national and international workshops and conferences. Dr. Wiescher is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association of the Advancement of Science. He is also an elected member of the Academia Europaea. In 2003, he was awarded the Hans Bethe Prize in Nuclear Physics and Astrophysics of the American Physical Society, and in 2018 he received the Laboratory Astrophysics Award of the American Astronomical Society. In 2021, Wiescher received the Wolfson fellowship of the British Royal Society and in 2023, he was selected as EMMI visiting professor at the Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung in Germany.