Rudy Wijnands (born 1971) is a Dutch astrophysicist. He is professor of Observational High-Energy Astrophysics at the

University of Amsterdam The University of Amsterdam (abbreviated as UvA, nl, Universiteit van Amsterdam) is a public research university located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The UvA is one of two large, publicly funded research universities in the city, the other being ...

Academic career

Since 2004 Wijnands has been part of the faculty with the Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy at the

in the Netherlands. In 2008 he was appointed associate professor, and in 2017 full professor. Before that, he worked at the

University of St Andrews (Aien aristeuein) , motto_lang = grc , mottoeng = Ever to ExcelorEver to be the Best , established = , type = Public research university Ancient university , endowment ...

in Scotland, and

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

in the United States. He received his PhD from the University of Amsterdam in 1999 with a thesis entitled "Millisecond phenomena in X-ray binaries".

Research

His research focuses on the

accretion Accretion may refer to: Science * Accretion (astrophysics), the formation of planets and other bodies by collection of material through gravity * Accretion (meteorology), the process by which water vapor in clouds forms water droplets around nucl ...

of matter onto

neutron star A neutron star is the collapsed core of a massive supergiant star, which had a total mass of between 10 and 25 solar masses, possibly more if the star was especially metal-rich. Except for black holes and some hypothetical objects (e.g. white ...

s and

black hole A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravitation, gravity is so strong that nothing, including light or other Electromagnetic radiation, electromagnetic waves, has enough energy to escape it. The theory of general relativity predicts t ...

s, which are very compact stellar remnants. He uses

X-ray An X-ray, or, much less commonly, X-radiation, is a penetrating form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation. Most X-rays have a wavelength ranging from 10 picometers to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30&nb ...

space telescopes such as

Chandra X-ray Observatory The Chandra X-ray Observatory (CXO), previously known as the Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility (AXAF), is a Flagship-class space telescope launched aboard the during STS-93 by NASA on July 23, 1999. Chandra is sensitive to X-ray sources 1 ...

and

XMM-Newton ''XMM-Newton'', also known as the High Throughput X-ray Spectroscopy Mission and the X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission, is an X-ray space observatory launched by the European Space Agency in December 1999 on an Ariane 5 rocket. It is the second cornerst ...

to observe the X-ray emission from these objects. In particular he studies neutron stars and black holes when they are accreting at very low rates. He also investigates the rate at which neutron stars cool after they have been heated by accretion, in order to learn about their interior composition. Furthermore, Wijnands has been involved in research into

quasi-periodic oscillation In X-ray astronomy, quasi-periodic oscillation (QPO) is the manner in which the X-ray light from an astronomical object flickers about certain frequencies. In these situations, the X-rays are emitted near the inner edge of an accretion disk in ...

s. In 1998, Wijnands and his PhD advisor

Michiel van der Klis Michiel Baldur Maximiliaan van der Klis (born 9 June 1953) is a Dutch astronomer best known for his work on extreme 'pairings' of stars called X-ray binaries, more particularly his explanation of the occurrence of quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs ...

discovered coherent millisecond X-ray pulsations in the persistent flux of the

X-ray binary X-ray binaries are a class of binary stars that are luminous in X-rays. The X-rays are produced by matter falling from one component, called the ''donor'' (usually a relatively normal star), to the other component, called the ''accretor'', which ...

SAX J1808.4-3658. This was strong evidence for the model in which radio

millisecond pulsar A millisecond pulsar (MSP) is a pulsar with a rotational period less than about 10 milliseconds. Millisecond pulsars have been detected in radio, X-ray, and gamma ray portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. The leading theory for the origin of ...

s are spun up to periods of a few milliseconds by the accretion of matter from a companion star in an X-ray binary.

Awards

In 2006 Wijnands received the

Bruno Rossi Prize The Bruno Rossi Prize is awarded annually by the High Energy Astrophysics division of the American Astronomical Society "for a significant contribution to High Energy Astrophysics, with particular emphasis on recent, original work". Named after as ...

along with Deepto Chakrabarty and Tod Strohmayer "for their pioneering research which revealed millisecond spin periods and established the powerful diagnostic tool of kilohertz intensity oscillations in accreting neutron star binary systems".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wijnands, Rudy 1971 births Living people 21st-century Dutch astronomers Dutch astrophysicists Academic staff of the University of Amsterdam University of Amsterdam alumni