Giants of Science

https://gigancinauki.pl/ge/biographies/8294,Danuta-Kielczewska.html
29.03.2024, 01:58

Danuta Kiełczewska

KIEŁCZEWSKA, Danuta (August 21, 1945, Siedlce - February 22, 2016, Warsaw), physicist. Daughter of Witold Bogusz, counselor in the secretariat of Comecon.

She graduated from S. Sempołowska Secondary School in Warsaw (1963), pursued studies in physics (1968) at the University of Warsaw, and then started working at the Department of High Energy Physics under the supervision of J. A. Zakrzewski. In 1975, she got her PhD on the basis of a dissertation entitled Interactions in the final states of selected p-shell hypernuclei. During a research internship at the University of California at Irvine in the 1980s, she changed the subject of her research and became involved in neutrino physics, which was developed there by Frederick Reines (in 1995 he received the Nobel Prize). She was part of the team that built the huge Cherenkov underground water detector called IMB. This detector was to be used to search for proton decay and to determine the lifetime limit for this possible decay. Meanwhile, it surprisingly recorded the emission of neutrinos from the supernova SN1987A gravity collapse. The dissertation on neutrino emissions from supernova explosions was the basis of K’s habilitation in 1995.

After returning to Warsaw K continued cooperation with the group from IMB. Thanks to her professional and organisational successes, experimental neutrino physics was established in Poland. K introduced Polish groups to great international cooperation in the Super-Kamiokande neutrino experiment in Japan. She was the co-author of the 1998 discovery of neutrino oscillations. She then included groups of physicists from Poland in the T2K neutrino experiment. In 2006, she received the Scopus Award for Scientific Achievement from Elsevier for the Polish author most often cited in the years 2001–05. In 2009 she obtained the title of professor.

 

75 lat fizyki na Hożej, ed. M. Kicińska i A. K. Wróblewski, Warsaw 1996; A.K. Wróblewski: Nauki fizyczne, [in:] Nauki ścisłe i przyrodnicze na Uniwersytecie Warszawskim. Monumenta Universitatis Varsoviensis 1816–2016, Warsaw 2016: Archives of the University of Warsaw: personal files.

Andrzej Kajetan Wróblewski

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