Thomas Mannel wird Erwin Schrödinger Gastprofessor 2025
he previous recipients include Nobel Prize winner Frank Wilczek and numerous pioneers of theoretical physics such as Sidney Drell, Victor Weisskopf, James Bjorken, Roman Jackiw and Michael Peskin: this year, Prof. Dr. Thomas Mannel from the Department of Physics at the University of Siegen will be awarded the prestigious Erwin Schrödinger Visiting Professorship. During the course of the year, Mannel will spend a total of four weeks as a guest of the Particle Physics working group at the University of Vienna. As part of his guest professorship, he will give a total of four lectures there. The lecture series is organized by the "Association for the Promotion of Theoretical Physics in Austria" and sponsored by the "City of Vienna Culture (MA7)".
"This award came as a complete surprise to me. I am all the more pleased about it - especially because this year we are celebrating 100 years of quantum mechanics worldwide, which was co-founded by Erwin Schrödinger. I consider it a special honor to be awarded the Schrödinger Visiting Professorship this year of all years," says Mannel.
A first visit to Vienna is planned for June. Mannel will then open his Vienna lecture series with a public colloquium; this will be followed by three more specialist lectures on more specialized topics in theoretical particle physics. "As a topic for the public lecture, I envision a kind of stocktaking of current particle physics: Where are we with our research right now - and where could it go in the coming years?" explains Thomas Mannel. He would also like to use his visiting professorship to initiate scientific collaboration between the working groups in Siegen and Vienna: "It would be great to have joint publications that also involve young scientists from the universities in Vienna and Siegen."
Mannel studied physics at TU Darmstadt, where he also completed his doctorate. After working as a research assistant at Harvard University in the US, Mannel completed his habilitation in Darmstadt. His first professorship took him to the University of Karlsruhe. In 2003, he moved to the University of Siegen, where he has been Professor of Theoretical Particle Physics ever since. Thomas Mannel is co-spokesperson of the Transregional Collaborative Research Center "Phenomenological Elementary Particle Physics after the Higgs Discovery". He is also involved in the joint Cluster of Excellence proposal "Color meets Flavor" submitted by the Universities of Bonn, Dortmund and Siegen and Forschungszentrum Jülich, which made it to the final round of the Cluster of Excellence competition.
Prof. Mannel conducts research into the phenomenology of elementary particles: He is particularly interested in particles that contain so-called heavy quarks - i.e. the "bottom" and the "charm" quark. Mannel was instrumental in developing methods for their description based on relativistic quantum theory, which are known in particle physics as effective quantum field theories. The application of these methods, together with the enormous experimental efforts, has significantly advanced the field of "quark flavor physics" - i.e. the description of the interactions of the different types of quarks.
A number of activities are also planned at the University of Siegen over the course of the year to mark the 100th anniversary of quantum mechanics. Among other things, there will be a series of Wednesday Academy lectures on quantum mechanics in the coming winter semester. In November, there will also be a new edition of the "Physics in the Apollo" event on the subject of quantum computing.
