Arnold O. Benz

Benz was educated at ETH Zurich, where he was awarded a diploma in theoretical physics in 1969. He then went to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he received a PhD in astrophysics for his research on the acceleration of the solar wind in 1973, under the supervision of Thomas Gold.Arnold O. Benz: The Acceleration of Solar Wind Protons and Heavy Ions. {{bibcode|1973PhDT.........8B}} After his return to ETH Zurich as a postdoc he focused on plasma physical processes in the solar corona.Arnold O. Benz: Millisecond radio spikes. {{bibcode|1986SoPh..104...99B}} He led the Research Group on Radio Astronomy at the Institute for Astronomy from 1974 to 2010. In 1974 he became a lecturer at the Physics Department and in 1993 he was nominated professor for physics with focus on astrophysics. He is professor emeritus at ETH Zurich since 2010 and continues to work at the Institute for Particle Physics and Astrophysics and part-time at Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz (FHNW) in Windisch, Switzerland.

Benz is well known for his observations and interpretation of the solar radio emission (ultra high frequency) M. Guedel and A.O. Benz, A catalogue of decimetric solar flare radio emission, Astronomy and Astrophysics Supplement, 75, 243-259 (1988), http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1988A%26AS...75..243G&link_type=ARTICLE&db_key=AST&high=H. Isliker and A.O. Benz, Catalogue of 1-3 GHz solar flare radio emission, Astronomy and Astrophysics Supplement, 104, 145-160 (1994), http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1994A%26AS..104..145I&link_type=ARTICLE&db_key=AST&high= and particle acceleration in solar and stellar flares with more than four hundred scholarly publications. The Güdel-Benz relation between radio and X-ray emission of flares was named after him.Jan Forbrich: The Radio-X-ray Relation in Cool Stars: Are We Headed Toward a Divorce? 16th Cambridge Workshop on Cool Stars, Stellar Systems, and the Sun, ASP 448 (2012), 455 Together with his student Säm Krucker Benz first detected heating events in the solar atmosphere that are now considered the most promising explanation for the high temperature of the corona.Säm Krucker, Arnold Benz, T.S. Bastian and L. Acton: X-ray Network Flares of the Quiet Sun The Astrophysical Journal, 488, 499-505 (1997). https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1086/304686/pdf More recently, Benz studied star formation using molecular line observations by the Herschel Space Observatory.

Benz presided several scientific committees, such as the Swiss Society for Astrophysics and Astronomy (1999–2002) and Division II (Sun and Heliosphere) of the International Astronomical Union (2000–2003). Markus Aschwanden (Lockheed Martin), Marina Battaglia (FHNW), Simon Bruderer (MPI Garching), André Csillaghy (FHNW), Manuel Güdel (Wien), Heinz Isliker (Tessaloniki), Säm Krucker (FHNW and UC Berkeley), Pascal Saint-Hilaire (UC Berkeley), and Susanne Wampfler (Bern) are among his former graduate students.

To the public at large, Benz is known for his numerous presentations on astronomy at the popular level, most prominently on Swiss television and radio since 1979, as well as for his several books on the interdisciplinary dialog between natural sciences and religion. He emphasizes the new perspectives that today's astrophysical findings open up for the concept of divine creation and highlights that this belief is based on participating perceptions and religious experiences that are fundamentally different from scientific observations.Jesse J. Thomas: Astrophysics and Creation: Perceiving the World through Science and Participation (Review) Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, vol. XXVIII, no. 1-2 (2016), 171-173 He received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Theology of the University of Zurich[http://www.uzh.ch/about/portrait/awards/hc/2011/theol.html Laudation (in German) for honorary degree from the University of Zurich 2011] for his merits.The University of the South (Sewanee, TN, USA) awarded him 2017 an honorary doctor's degree in Science "for his distinguished contributions to astronomical inquiry and for his illuminating, interdisciplinary reflections".[http://www.arnoldbenz.ch/resources/CitationUoS.pdf Citation University of the South.] May 13, 2017

• Plasma Astrophysics. Kinetic Processes in Solar and Stellar Coronae. 2nd ed. Kluwer, Dordrecht 2002, {{ISBN|1-4020-0695-0}}
• Astrophysics and Creation: Perceiving the Universe Through Science and Participation. Crossroads Publishing, New York 2016, {{ISBN|978-0824522131}}.
• The Future of the Universe: Chance, Chaos, God? second edition, Continuum Publishing, New York 2002, {{ISBN|978-3-8436-0074-3}}.
• Meaningless Space? in : George, Mark/ Pezzoli-Olgiati, Daria (eds.), Meaningful Spaces. Religious Representations in Place, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 23–34 (2014).
• Astrophysics and Creation: Perceiving the Universe Through Science and Participation. Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science, 52, 186-195 (2017).
• Mission to Saturn: The Story of a Debate about Science and God. (with Samuel Vollenweider) Crossroads Publishing, New York 2022, {{ISBN|978-0-8245-5055-4}}.

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• [https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/search/fq=%7B!type%3Daqp%20v%3D%24fq_database%7D&fq_database=database%3A%20astronomy&q=author%3A(%22Benz%2C%20A.%22)&sort=date%20desc%2C%20bibcode%20desc&p_=0 Publications by Arnold Benz] in the Astrophysics Data System
• {{Helveticat}}
• [https://portal.dnb.de/opac.htm?method=simpleSearch&query=122657985/ Literature of and about Arnold Benz] in the catalogue of the German National Library
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20160717052705/http://www.arnoldbenz.org/ personal website]
• [https://www.phys.ethz.ch/the-department/people/person-detail.html?persid=77156 ETH Zurich website]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20161010094849/http://www.catherinemwallace.com/unlikely/ Catherine M. Wallace: Unlikely Theologians and the Coleridgean Imagination Anglican Theological Review, vol. 86, no. 1 (2004), 189-202]

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Category:1945 births

Category:21st-century Swiss writers

Category:20th-century Swiss physicists

Category:21st-century Swiss physicists

Category:Swiss astrophysicists

Category:Cornell University alumni

Category:Academic staff of ETH Zurich

Category:Swiss male writers

Category:Living people

Category:Swiss science writers

Category:ETH Zurich alumni