17.9.2026
Two of this year's Otto Haxel Dissertation Prizes went to Heidelberg. Klaus Paschek, who completed his doctorate at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA), received the first prize. Nikolas Liebster of the Kirchhoff Institute for Physics (KIP) shares the second prize aequo loco with Lea Reuter of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. The prizes were presented at the summer reception of the KIT Friends and Supporters Association.
Awarded together with the German Physical Society since 2017, the prize recognises the best physics dissertations from Heidelberg University, the University of Göttingen and KIT- those three institutions where the nuclear physicist Otto Haxel (1909-1998) worked. It is among the most highly endowed dissertation prizes for physics in all of Germany.
Klaus Paschek was recognised for his dissertation "From Space to the Hadean Earth: Prebiotic Synthesis and the Origins of Life", written in the laboratory astrophysics group of Professor Thomas Henning at the MPIA. He asks how the molecular building blocks of life reached the early Earth: delivered by meteorites, or formed on the planet itself. His work draws on astrophysics, geochemistry and prebiotic chemistry alike.
Nikolas Liebster completed his doctorate in the group of Professor Markus Oberthaler at the Kirchhoff Institute for Physics. His dissertation, "Pattern Formation and Supersolid Sound Modes in a Driven Superfluid", deals with quantum systems far from equilibrium. Drive a Bose-Einstein condensate periodically, and its atoms arrange themselves into regular patterns. Liebster also measured collective excitations of the kind associated with supersolid states of matter.
"I was completely surprised and feel deeply honoured to receive this prize. When we started the project, I never expected this recognition. It was only possible thanks to the team working on the potassium experiment, Markus's supervision and the dynamic environment at Heidelberg University," says Nikolas Liebster.
The Faculty of Physics and Astronomy warmly congratulates Klaus Paschek, Nikolas Liebster and Lea Reuter.
KIT
