This year, the Justus-Liebig-University Gießen awards their Röntgen Prize to the young scientist Dr. Tetyana Galatyuk. For more than 50 years, Pfeiffer Vacuum has donated this award together with the Dr. Erich Pfeiffer Foundation and the Ludwig Schunk Foundation in the field of radiation physics.

Currently, Galatyuk is a junior professor at the Technical University of Darmstadt. She receives the Röntgen Prize for significant contributions to explaining the unexpected strength of the virtual photon radiation emitted in nucleus-nucleus collisions. This concerns the properties of particles in the compressed and heated collision zone of a nucleus, where they are subject to strong interactions. The Röntgen Prize award winner studied this nuclear reaction at a long-standing major customer of Pfeiffer Vacuum, the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research.

The basis for these experiments is a particle accelerator, whose operation is only possible thanks to vacuum technology. Vacuum solutions by Pfeiffer Vacuum are successfully used there. With her findings, Galatyuk is making an essential contribution to solving the DLS (Di-Lepton Spectrometer) puzzle.

After Galatyuk successfully completed her studies in Kiev, she worked in a nuclear power plant in the Ukraine and, in 2005, she then came to Frankfurt as a doctoral candidate. She has meanwhile built up a prestigious reputation among experts.

The day before the award ceremony at the Justus-Liebig-University Gießen, the winner visited the founding company Pfeiffer Vacuum and reported on her findings.

Dr. Tetyana Galatyuk during her visit to the founding company Pfeiffer Vacuum.