Amri Wandel

Since 2018, he has been the chairman of the Israeli Association for Astrobiology and the Beginning of Life.

In 2012, he recorded an online 33-lesson Esperanto version of his astrophysics course at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, as part of the "University of Esperanto".

Amri Wandel's article "Esperanto and the Problem of International Communication" appeared in the 2009 Hebrew Expression and Language Israeli state Examination. Originally, the article was published in "Almost 2000 - Journal of Science and Technology".

In the year 1998–1999 he was a visiting professor, on sabbatical at the Department of Astronomy at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he taught four astrophysics courses. In that year Wandel collaborated at UCLA on research of Active Galactic Nuclei together with Professor Math Malkan which produced three groundbreaking papers on the subject of massive black holes. One of their articles, which was the first to present the relationship between the mass and luminosity of massive black holes in active galaxies, was cited about 600 times. Consequently, Wandel and Malkan won a research grant from the BSF Foundation. Since then, Wandel has been teaching summer courses at UCLA every few years, as well as conducting research collaborations.

In 1992 he joined the International Academy of Esperanto (AN). Since 1995, Wandel has been a member of the board of the World Esperanto Association, albeit on breaks. In Israel, he served as chairman of the Israel Esperanto Association from 2008–2019 and editor of its journal, Israela Esperantisto. Since 2020, he is a plain member of the association's board. In 2015, he published a study on the number of Esperanto speakers on social networks, which reached an estimated two million speakers. This study has become the accepted reference for the number of Esperanto speakers in the world and is even quoted by Ethnologue.

In 1974 he completed his bachelor's degree in physics and computer science at Tel Aviv University. In the years 1974-1980 he served in the IDF. He then went on to pursue a master's degree in physics, which he also completed at Tel Aviv University in 1978. In 1980 went on to pursue a doctorate in astrophysics at Stony Brook University. From 1983 to 1988, he held post-doctoral positions in astrophysics at Princeton University, the University of Maryland, and Stanford University. After returning to Israel, he began working as a researcher at the Weizmann Institute in 1988. Wandel remained at the Weizmann Institute until 1990, when he began working at the Hebrew University. In 1999 he created the course "Astrophysics and Life in the Universe", which he also teaches. Wandel serves as a senior scientist at the Racah Institute of Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Amri Wandel (born 1954, Hebrew: עמרי ונדל) is a senior scientist in Astrophysics at the Racah Institute of Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Wandel is an expert in astrobiology and chairman of the Israeli Association of Astrobiology and Early Life. He is also president of the International Academy of Sciences San Marino.