17.9.2026
Astronomer Myriam Benisty has been appointed Honorary Professor at the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Rector Professor Frauke Melchior presented her with the certificate on 8 September 2026.
Since September 2024, Benisty has been head of the Planet and Star Formation Department at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy on the Königstuhl in Heidelberg, succeeding Thomas Henning. She had previously worked in the same department as a postdoctoral researcher.
Her research focuses on where and under what conditions planets form. Young stars are surrounded by discs of gas and dust, and it is within these discs that planets take shape – often revealing their presence only through the rings, gaps and spirals they carve into the surrounding material as they grow. Benisty combines observations from space- and ground-based telescopes across multiple wavelength ranges with theoretical models. In 2021, her group detected a disc around the young planet PDS 70c – a place where moons may be forming right now. Since January 2022, she has led PROTOPLANETS, a project funded by the European Research Council.
Before coming to Heidelberg, she worked at the Institute of Planetology and Astrophysics in Grenoble and at the Observatory of the Côte d’Azur, and taught at Université Grenoble Alpes. From 2017 to 2021, she was based at the French-Chilean CNRS institute in the Department of Astronomy at the Universidad de Chile in Santiago. She is also involved in the development of METIS and PCS, two instruments for the European Southern Observatory’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT).
“I am very honoured and thrilled to join the faculty and look forward to this new chapter of collaboration, learning, and discovery. I am excited to continue collaborating with the university’s students and faculty members in astronomy and to foster new research projects and academic partnerships together,” says Myriam Benisty.
The Department of Physics and Astronomy warmly welcomes Professor Myriam Benisty.
