Wolfgang Kundt is a German astrophysicist. He studied Theoretical Physics in Hamburg, centered on general relativity, and got his diploma in 1956, ph.d. in 1959, advised by Pascual Jordan. With Jürgen Ehlers and Engelbert Schücking, Kundt collaborated in a joint seminar, known as Hamburg's 'Jordan Seminar' on general relativity. In 1965, he habilitated at Hamburg on "Canonical Quantisation of gauge-invariant Field Theories", and was subsequently Lecturer and - since 1971 - 'Scientific Adviser and Professor' at the University of Hamburg. When Jordan had reached retirement age, in 1977, Wolfgang Priester called him to the University of Bonn, where he remained active beyond his own retirement, in 1996, until today. During his career, his scientific interests expanded to include astrophysics, geophysics, and biophysics. During the years 1969-1979, he also conducted the celestial mechanics experiment E11 of the German-American spacecraft project HELIOS, which for technical reasons had to be eventually sacrificed to the ten active experiments on board. In 1984, Zichichi asked him to direct yearly courses at Erice, on 'neutron stars, active galactic nuclei, and jets'. His scientific interests thereby moved from gravitational waves to neutron stars and accretion disks, to the astrophysical jets, to supernova explosions and gamma-ray bursts, further to terrestrial plate tectonics, to the Tunguska event, and to the osmotically pumped water circulation in plants. With these widely spaced interests, he followed his teacher Pascual Jordan, and decades-long friend Thomas Gold; they influenced his almost 300 publications, among them the books "Astrophysics, a new approach", and "Physikalische Mythen auf dem Prüfstand". In particular, a new explanation has been given by Wolfgang Kundt in his 1999 analysis of the Tunguska event based on the facts collected by Moscow's Andrei Olchowatow, as the present-day formation of a kimberlite, in which ten megatons of methane were explosively ejected, whose icy remnants in the upper atmosphere caused three bright nights to follow in Europe. He is married since 1966, and has a daughter, and a son.
Selected Works
Astrophysics. A Primer. Springer, Berlin u. a. 2001, .
As editor: Neutron Stars and their Birth Events. Kluwer, Dordrecht u. a. 1990,.
Kosmische Überschallstrahlen. In: Rheinisch-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Natur-, Ingenieur- und Wirtschaftswissenschaften. Vorträge. N 359, 1988, ISSN 0066-5754, S. 7–28.
As editor: Astrophysical Jets and their Engines. Reidel, Dordrecht u. a. 1987,.
As editor: Physik des Sonnensystems und der Kometen. Bouvier, Bonn 1985,.
With Ole Marggraf: Physikalische Mythen auf dem Prüfstand. Eine Sammlung begründeter Alternativtheorien von Geophysik über Kosmologie bis Teilchenphysik, Springer 2014,
