Thomas Henning

Video +

About

Bio

Thomas Henning is Director of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, where he heads the Planetary and Star Formation Department. He is also Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Jena as well as Honorary Professor at the University of Heidelberg. Henning’s research is dedicated to the understanding of how stars and planets form; to this end he employs a variety of methods reaching from infrared observations to laboratory experiments. Henning established the Heidelberg Origins of Life Initiative (HIFOL) and is a Co-Investigator of major instrumentation projects such as MIRI for the James Webb Space Telescope. He has been a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina since 1999. In 2009, the asteroid 30882 was named "Tomhenning" in his honour.