Anna Frebel


Anna Frebel is a German astronomer working on discovering the oldest stars in the universe.

Career

Anna Frebel grew up Göttingen, Germany. After finishing high school, she studied physics in Freiburg im Breisgau. She continued her studies in Australia, and obtained her PhD from the Australian National University's Mount Stromlo Observatory in Canberra. A W. J. McDonald Postdoctoral Fellowship brought her to the University of Texas at Austin in 2006, where she continued her studies.
From 2009 to 2011 she was a Clay Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge. Since 2012 she is an assistant professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In 2005 Frebel discovered the star HE 1327-2326, which is the most iron-deficient star, stemming from a time very shortly after the Big Bang. In 2007 she also discovered the red giant star HE 1523-0901, which is about 13.2 billion years old.

Awards and honors

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