Ina Brandes, North Rhine-Westphalia’s Minister of Science, presented a funding commitment of 113 million euros for the renovation of the Physikalisches Institut at the University of Bonn’s administration building. The funds come from the “North Rhine-Westphalia Plan for Good Infrastructure.”

Starting in the summer semester of 2026, the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Bonn will offer the certificate program “Advanced Machine Learning and Data Analysis in Physics.”

Thirty-four years after scientists at the University of Cologne and Cornell University first conceived it, the Fred Young Submillimeter Telescope (FYST) now rises above the Atacama Desert, near the summit of Cerro Chajnantor in Chile’s Parque Astronómico Atacama. FYST will help answer some of the most important questions in astronomy, including how the universe works, the nature of dark energy and dark matter, how galaxies form and evolve and what happened in those mysterious first moments after the Big Bang.

The DFG is funding the development of ring laser interferometers for the high-precision measurement of rotational motions in the field of Earth sciences.

Applications possible until May 15! The "Stiftung für Physik und Astronomie" in Bonn honors academic performance and commitment in the study of physics (teaching degree and major subject) and astrophysics with the Jasbinsek Kunkelmann-Stipendium  for the Master's program (one-year scholarship of € 300 per month). The scholarship is granted from 01.10.2026 to 30.09.2027.

This year, the Physics Institutes once again held a Carnival celebration in the foyer of the Wolfgang Paul Lecture Hall on Weiberfastnacht.

Under the leadership of the University of Bonn, a research team led by Prof. Dr. Pavel Kroupa from the Helmholtz Institute for Radiation and Nuclear Physics has discovered that galaxy clusters are about twice as heavy as previously assumed. The additional mass comes mainly from neutron stars and stellar black holes and also explains the observed quantities of heavy elements.

Prof. Dr. Dr.h.c. Ulf-G. Meißner from the Helmholtz Institute for Radiation and Nuclear Physics at the University of Bonn received the Award for International Scientific Cooperation. The Chinese Academy of Sciences honors the physicist for his outstanding contributions to scientific cooperation. During a festive ceremony in Beijing, Academy President Jianguo Hou presented the scientist with the coveted medal.