Michael Thoennessen is a University Distinguished Professor at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams of

Michigan State University Michigan State University (Michigan State or MSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan, United States. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State o ...

(MSU) and an elected Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS).

Education and Career

Michael Thoennessen received his Ph.D. in experimental nuclear physics from the

State University of New York at Stony Brook Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public university, public research university in Stony Brook, New York, United States, on Long Island. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is on ...

in 1988. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the Joint Institute for Heavy Ion Research at

Oak Ridge National Laboratory Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is a federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1943, the laboratory is sponsored by the United Sta ...

and the

University of Tennessee The University of Tennessee, Knoxville (or The University of Tennessee; UT; UT Knoxville; or colloquially UTK or Tennessee) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Knoxville, Tennessee, United St ...

he joined the faculty of

in the Department of Physics & Astronomy and the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL). He served as the Editor-in-Chief of the

American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of ...

's Physical Review journals from 2017 until 2022.

Research

For his Ph.D. thesis Michael Thoennessen performed the first measurement of the giant dipole resonance built on highly excited state in heavy fissile nuclides. At MSU he focused on the study of extremely proton- and neutron-rich nuclides. As a founding member of the Modular Neutron Array collaboration his research group measured the properties of nuclides at and beyond the dripline. Especially noteworthy was the discovery of ²⁶O. Overall, Prof. Thoennessen co-authored the discovery of 50 isotopes.

Honors

Thoennessen received the Benjamin J. Dasher Award (1998) and the William Elgin Wickenden Award (1990) of the American Society for Engineering Education. He was elected fellow of the APS in 2005 he also received the University Distinguished Faculty Award at MSU. He won the GENCO (GSI Exotic Nuclei Community) Membership Award in 2005 and the APS Division of Nuclear Physics Mentoring Award in 2009. He was named Physical Review Outstanding Referee in 2013 and appointed University Distinguished Professor in 2013.

Scientific Publications

* *The Discovery of Isotopes: A Complete Compilation,

Springer Nature Springer Nature or the Springer Nature Group is a German-British academic publishing company created by the May 2015 merger of Springer Science+Business Media and Holtzbrinck Publishing Group's Nature Publishing Group, Palgrave Macmillan, and Macm ...

, (2016)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Thoennessen, Michael Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American academics Stony Brook University alumni