Professor Andrzej Buras elected as foreign member of the Polish Academy of Sciences

News from Physics Department - 2013-07-01

Prof. Andrzej Buras
(Photo: Astrid Eckert / TUM)

The physicist Prof. Andrzej Buras has been elected as a foreign member of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Polish: Polska Akademia Nauk, PAN).

Andrzej Buras is a leading theoretician in the field of applied quantum field theory and quantum chromodynamics (QCD). He has been elected on the basis of his extensive studies of strong-interaction effects in deep-inelastic processes, calculations of higher-order QCD effects in weak and rare meson decays and extensive studies of the physics beyond the Standard Model in flavour-changing neutral-current processes.

Andrzej Buras was born in Poland, where he lived until his emigration to Denmark in 1971. He has been full professor of theoretical elementary particle physics at the Physik-Department since 1988.

After his retirement in the spring of 2012 he still remains an active researcher, having as a primary goal the construction of the theory of flavour. These activities, which involve a group of four post-docs, are financed by an Advanced ERC-Grant, which he won in 2011. Moreover he serves at TUM as Carl von Linde Senior Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS) and as TUM Emeritus of Excellence. He has been awarded the Smoluchowski-Warburg medal of the German and Polish physical societies in 2007 and is a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities. He is also a foreign member of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences (Polish: Polska Akademia Umiejętności, PAU), Krakow.

The Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN) is the leading academic society in Poland. Besides its role as a learned society it also has a strong influence as a scientific advisory body and oversees numerous scientific institutions, employing about 2000 people and spending about a third of the national budget on science.

The academy is composed of national and foreign members, who are appointed for life. All members are elected by the general assembly among candidates with the highest scientific achievements and of recognised authority.

“It is a great honour for me to become a foreign member of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw”, says Andrzej Buras. He believes that as one of the very few foreign members with perfect knowledge of the Polish language, he will be able to take part in some of the regular sessions of the academy that are conducted exclusively in Polish. “This will allow me to extend my contact with Polish scientists beyond those which I already have in the field of particle physics,” he concludes.

The Physik-Department congratulates Andrzej Buras on this distinction!

Desk

Dr. Johannes Wiedersich