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Photo: P. Chuchała, University of Warsaw

02.05.2025 | 

Professor Marek Pfützner from the University of Warsaw, Poland, receives the Smoluchowski-Warburg Prize 2025 “for his breakthrough discovery of two-proton radioactivity, the least known nuclear decay mode, predicted more than 40 years before”. Pfützner is a long-standing scientific collaboration partner of GSI/FAIR. The experiments leading to the discovery were largely carried out at the GSI/FAIR fragment separator FRS.

Marek Pfützner is a leading international expert in the field of nuclear structure studies of exotic nuclei far from stability. His research interests focus on exotic nuclear decay modes. In 2002, his discovery of two-proton radioactivity of the isotope ⁴⁵Fe received widespread attention — 40 years after the prediction of this hitherto unknown nuclear decay mode. Pfützner carried out his experiments on ⁴⁵Fe at the GSI/FAIR fragment separator FRS.

The scientific collaboration with German colleagues is a focus of his research. Pfützner worked twice as a postdoc at GSI (from 1989 to 1991 and from 1995 to 1997) and is still regularly on site for experiments, most recently in early 2025. To gain deeper insights into exotic nuclear decay channels, Marek Pfützner initiated a program to study exotic decays using an optical time projection chamber developed in his Warsaw University group. This extraordinarily successful program led to a number of highly regarded publications, including the discovery of the beta-delayed three-proton emission of ⁴⁵Fe.

“Marek Pfützner is our highly esteemed colleague who contributes significantly to the research program at the FRS,” says Professor Christoph Scheidenberger, head of the “FRS/SFRS Experiments” department at GSI/FAIR. “Our heartfelt congratulations go out to him on the occasion of this extraordinary recognition of his achievements. We look forward to many more years of fruitful collaboration.”

The Marian Smoluchowski-Emil Warburg Prize is awarded jointly by the Polish Physical Society and the DPG for outstanding contributions in pure or applied physics in memory of the work of Marian Smoluchowski in Poland and Emil Warburg in Germany. The prize is awarded every two years alternately to a physicist who lives and works in Germany or Poland. It consists of a certificate, a silver medal and a sum of money. (CP)