Peter Barthel Email & Phone Number

Following Physics and Astronomy studies in Amsterdam and Utrecht, Peter Barthel obtained his PhD at the University of Leiden in 1984, on a Thesis "Radio Structure in Quasars". He held two successive postdoctoral fellowships at the Astronomy Department of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, USA, during 1984-1988, before starting his employment at the Kapteyn Institute of the University of Groningen, as Senior Fellow of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, KNAW, in 1988. Following promotion to Assistant Professor in 1993, and Associate Professor in 1996, he became Full Professor in March 2004, in the field of Astrophysics of Active Galaxies. Barthel has authored and co-authored hundreds of scientific and conference papers, dozens of miscellaneous, semi-popular, and newspaper articles, and several Astronomy Pictures-of-the Day, APODs. He was co-editor of four books, including one on the Star of Bethlehem. He is President of the Royal Netherlands Astronomical Society, since 2017. He served on many international telescope time allocation committees. He also served on the national committee evaluating the secondary education physics curriculum, and succeeded in bringing elementary astronomy and astrophysics into that curriculum. That last fact underlines his keen interest in science communication and education. He led the Groningen team winning the 2008 Academische Jaarprijs on Science Communication, in a national project "Discover the Invisible Universe". He was awarded the Dutch 2013 Willem de Graaff prize for his science communication efforts (and taught the moon phases to Saint Nicholas and two million TV viewers that year). He was appointed first director of the Groningen Pre-university Academy in 2004 and led this Academy over the subsequent years into an established and well-supported entity. In his spare time he collaborates with the professional Grieg piano duo, in the project "Keys to the Stars", and thinks and writes about the relation between religion and science.Website www.peterbarthel.nl

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  Universiteit Leiden

  Astronomy And Astrophysics