Heino Falcke

Heino Falcke obtained his PhD in 1994 from the University of Bonn and worked at the Univ. Maryland, the Univ. of Arizona, the MPIfR in Bonn, and ASTRON in Dwingeloo. Since 2007 he is full professor at Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. In 2000, he proposed using a network of millimeter-wave radio telescopes to image the shadow of a black hole. Falcke was co-founder of the Event Horizon Telescope and chair of its science council. He received among others the Einstein Medal in Switzerland; the NAS Henry Draper Medal in the US, and the Spinoza award in the Netherlands. Falcke is member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Science and decorated as Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion. He is an ordained lay-preacher of the protestant church in Germany and author of the book, Light in the Darkness: Black Holes, the Universe and Us.