High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Rudolf Kippenhahn (born 24 May 1926, in Pernink, Czechoslovakia) is a German astrophysicist and science author. Professor Dr. Rudolf Kippenhahn originally studied mathematics and physics at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg before changing to Astronomy. From 1975 to 1991, Professor Rudolph was director of the Max Planck Institute For Astrophysics in Garching, Munich, Germany. Since 1991, Dr Rudolf has been an active published author in Goettingen, trying to popularise astronomical science research, in the same vein as Stephen Hawkings writing, for which he won the Bruno H. Bürgel prize. His books cover such diverse topics as astronomy, cryptology and atomic physics. In the year 2005, Dr Kippenhahn was honoured by the Royal Astronomical Society with the Eddington medal for his scientific research into the computation of the structure of star and of stellar evolution.