Prof. Dr. Rolf-Peter Kudritzki

Rolf Kudritzki is distinguished for his many important contributions in stellar astronomy. He is a world leading expert in stellar spectroscopy. He has developed novel methods to model the atmospheres of stars and he has applied these methods with great success for the quantitative analysis of stellar spectra. His studies have focussed on the formation and evolution of the most massive and most luminous stars in the universe. He uses these objects as tools to understand the chemical evolution of galaxies and to determine accurate distances to galaxies. Rolf Kudritzki was director of the Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Munich University from 1982 to 2000. He then moved to Hawaii as the director of the Institute for Astronomy.