Press release: Göttingen University secures Lower Saxony Impulse Professorship
No. 94 - 10.07.2026
Professor Richard I. Anderson takes up Chair of Observational Cosmology
The University of Göttingen has secured a Lower Saxony Impulse Professorship. This funds the appointment of the renowned astrophysicist Professor Dr Richard I. Anderson to the Chair in Observational Cosmology. The funding is around two million euros over the next five years. At the end of this period, the Faculty of Physics will take on the professorship.
Anderson will establish an innovative research programme at the University of Göttingen at the interface between stellar astrophysics and observational cosmology. The aim is to work towards resolving the still unexplained discrepancy in determining the Hubble constant, known as the “Hubble tension”. In addition, he will pursue new approaches to the spectroscopic investigation of variable astronomical phenomena. His research also addresses how stars function and age, how far away stars and galaxies are, and how fast and why the universe is expanding. He further leads the time-domain working group for the Wide-field Spectroscopic Telescope (WST), a large international project currently being developed.
“Professor Anderson’s Lower Saxony Impulse Professorship will make a lasting contribution to raising the profile of astrophysics at the University of Göttingen,” says Professor Anke Holler, Vice-President for Professorial Appointments, University of Göttingen. “His expertise excellently complements the existing research environment and fits perfectly with the strategy of both the University and the Faculty.”
Richard I. Anderson, born in 1982, studied physics at the University of Göttingen and was awarded a PhD in astronomy and astrophysics from the University of Geneva, Switzerland in 2013. He was an SNSF postdoctoral research fellow at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, USA from 2014 to 2017 before joining the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Garching near Munich, Germany from 2017 to 2020. Starting in early 2021, he led an independent research group as assistant professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, funded by an ERC Starting Grant and an SNSF Eccellenza Professorial Fellowship. In April 2026, he accepted the position at the University of Göttingen.
The Lower Saxony Impulse Professorship enables Lower Saxony’s Ministry of Science and Culture together with the Volkswagen Foundation to support universities in the region. This means, universities can attract or retain promising academics in the early stages of their careers, consolidating Lower Saxony as a region of scientific excellence. It is aimed at researchers (“rising stars”) nearing the end of the early stages of their career, up to a maximum of ten years after obtaining their PhD, with a view to boosting their potential for future senior leadership roles.
Contact:
Professor Richard I. Anderson
University of Göttingen
Faculty of Physics
Institute of Astrophysics and Geophysics
Tel: +49 (0)551 39-29989