Heino Falcke
Heino Falcke (born 26 September 1966 in Cologne) is a German professor of radio astronomy and astroparticle physics at the Radboud University Nijmegen (Netherlands). His main field of study is black holes, and he is the originator of the concept of the \"black hole shadow\". Falcke studied physics at the University of Cologne from 1986 to 1987, and then at the University of Bonn from 1987 where he graduated with a Diploma (equivalent to a master\'s degree) in Physics in 1992. He subsequently obtained a PhD degree in Astronomy summa cum laude in 1994 from the University of Bonn. In 2007, he became a full professor at Nijmegen. Falcke is involved in theoretical astronomy as well as observational and experimental studies. Falcke was one of the leading forces behind the radio telescope LOFAR. Apart from his work with LOFAR, he was also involved in the development of the Square Kilometre Array. In 2000 he predicted it would be possible to make measurements near the edge of a black hole. Four years later, his team managed to do that. Falcke predicted that near the edges of a black hole, there would be a \'black hole shadow\' that could be detected by a radio telescope. This shadow was eventually observed with the Event Horizon Telescope. On 10 April 2019, the project announced that they created an image of the black hole at the centre of M87 (M87*). On 12 May 2022 followed the image of the central black hole in the Milky Way (Sagittarius A*).
