Robert Schwarz (astrophysicist)
Robert Schwarz is an astrophysicist who has (as of 2016) spent 12 winters at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, the most winters that anyone has ever spent at the South Pole. An avid photographer of the pole, many news organizations used his photographs in their coverage of the medical evacuation flights from the south pole in June, 2016.
Life
Schwarz, a native of Munich, Germany, told the Antarctic Sun that he first became interested in astronomy on a Boy Scout field trip to the island volcano of Stromboli, near Sicily. “It was an absolutely amazing star sky,” Schwarz said. “That’s how I got hooked on that. I wanted to know more about it.” He holds an undergraduate degree in chemistry, math and physics, as well as a master’s degree in physics from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich. He applied to the European Space Agency to become an astronaut, and has expressed interest in traveling to Mars.
Research
1996-1997 and 1997-1998: on staff with the AMANDA (Antarctic Muon and Neutrino Detector Array), the first large-scale experiment using ice to detect neutrinos.
More recent years: on staff with experiments using the BICEP (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) and Keck Array instruments to study cosmic microwave background (CMB).