MG 12 · 2009
Michael Kramer
Michael Kramer is a radio astronomer known for pulsars, precision tests of gravity, and binary neutron-star systems.
Born
1967, Cologne, Germany
Affiliation at the Time of the Award
Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, Bonn, Germany
Prize Motivation
“For his fundamental contributions to pulsar astrophysics, and notably for having first confirmed the existence of spin-orbit precession in binary pulsars.”
Meeting
MG XII, Paris, France
Work
Pulsars are rotating neutron stars whose clock-like signals allow extreme tests of gravity and dense-matter physics.
Kramer made precise timing observations of binary pulsars and confirmed spin-orbit precession in such systems.
These measurements provided stringent tests of general relativity and strengthened pulsars as laboratories for fundamental physics.