Prof. Norbert Langer has been one of the world’s leading experts in the field of theoretical Astrophysics for more than three decades. He investigates the evolution of high mass stars up to the point when they explode as supernovae. Born 1958, he studied in Göttingen, where he completed his doctorate in 1986. In the same year, Langer became the first recipient of the German Astronomical Society’s Ludwig Biermann Award.

From 1993 to 1996, Dr. Langer worked at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching on the strength of a Heisenberg Fellowship and subsequently moved to Potsdam University.

From 2000 to 2009, he was conducting research and teaching at the Utrecht University (The Netherlands) until he was awarded one of the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt-Professur under the auspices of the Bonn University. Since then, he is head of the Stellar Physics Group at the Argelander-Institut für Astronomie (Bonn, Germany).

During his career Prof. Langer has published more than 300 refereed papers, including a review in the Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ARAA). He supervised more than 25 PhD thesis, regularly delivered many invited and contributed talks in international meetings and research institutions and he also participated as lecturer in several schools (e.g. XIII IAC Winter School in 2001, 5th Annual MESA Summer School in 2016, etc.).