Professor Tsvi Piran is a world-renowned theoretical astrophysicist and distinguished authority in relativistic astrophysics. He holds the prestigious Schwarzmann Chair of Physics at the Racah Institute of Physics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he has maintained a distinguished academic career since completing his doctoral studies. Piran earned his PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1976 under the supervision of J. Shaham and J. Katz, with his thesis focusing on the Penrose process and modeling of Gamma-ray Bursts from instabilities around black holes. His exceptional career includes a significant tenure as a long-term member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton from 1980 to 1987, where he conducted foundational research in numerical relativity and gravitational collapse phenomena.
Professor Piran is internationally celebrated for his groundbreaking contributions to understanding Gamma-ray Bursts, the most luminous explosions in the cosmos, which have fundamentally transformed our comprehension of high-energy astrophysical events. His pioneering theoretical framework established GRBs as cosmological phenomena originating from catastrophic stellar collapses and binary neutron star mergers, providing essential insights that proved invaluable for the era of gravitational wave astronomy. Piran's research group has developed sophisticated analytical methods, phenomenological models, and numerical simulations that have become standard tools in relativistic astrophysics, with applications extending to tidal disruption events and the origin of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays. His profound scientific impact is evidenced by more than 420 publications with over 37,500 citations and an impressive H index of 96, reflecting the extensive influence of his work across multiple subfields of astrophysics.
Beyond his research achievements, Professor Piran has provided exemplary leadership in the global astrophysics community through his directorship of the ISF Center of Excellence in Astrophysics from 2002 to 2010 and the I-Core Center for Astrophysics from 2013 to 2019. His research has been generously supported by three prestigious European Research Council Advanced Grants, including the GRBs project, TreX, and the currently active MultiJets project. In recognition of his transformative contributions, Piran received the EMET Prize for Physics and Space Sciences in 2019 and the 16th Marcel Grossman Award in 2021, cementing his legacy as one of the most influential theoretical astrophysicists of his generation. His mentorship has cultivated numerous scholars who now hold faculty positions at leading universities worldwide, ensuring the continued advancement of relativistic astrophysics for future researchers.
