Andrzej Sobolewski


Andrzej Sobolewski is a Polish physicist and academic working at the Institute of Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. He is a fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and Foundation for Polish Science as well as a member of the National Science Centre.

Life and career

He was born on 9 October 1951, in Augustów, Polish People's Republic and attended the Grzegorz Piramowicz High School No. 2. In 1977, he graduated in biophysics from the University of Warsaw. Since 1976, he has been working at the Institute of Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences as an assistant professor and since 1991 as a professor.
At the Faculty of Physics, he received his doctoral degree in 1981 and habilitation in 1989. Between 1985-1986, he was on scholarship at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. He was also granted an academic scholarship at the University of Arizona in 1994 and the University of Düsseldorf in 1998 and 1999. Since 1990, he has been collaborating with Wolfgang Domcke from the University of Munich. His main area of interest is theoretical physical chemistry. Together with Domcke, he made important contributions to the identification and description of the mechanism responsible for photostability of living matter. This mechanism of radiationless deactivation of electron-excited states of DNA and protein, known as the Sobolewski-Domcke scenario, furthers the understanding of why the fundamental biological structures are relatively resistant to UV radiation. This discovery proved to be of great importance for the research into the beginnings of life on Earth because it explains in what ways the survival and development of living organisms was possible despite strong UV radiation on the Earth at that time.
Sobolewski is also a member of the Warsaw Scientific Society. In 2014, he was appointed member of the council of the National Science Centre.

Awards

Sobolewski is an author of about 130 original publications in international journals and chapters in three monographs, some of which include: