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Walter Lewin Scientist

Walter Hendrik Gustav Lewin (born January 29, 1936) is a Dutch astrophysicist and former professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lewin achieved his PhD in nuclear physics in 1965 at the Delft University of Technology and was a member of MIT's physics faculty for 43 years beginning in 1966 until his retirement in 2009.Lewin's major contributions in astrophysics include the discovery of the first slowly rotating neutron star through all-sky balloon surveys, research in X-ray detection in investigations through satellites and observatories worldwide. Lewin has received numerous awards for outstanding teaching and is well known for his popular lectures on physics and massive online courses taught on edX and MIT OpenCourseWare. These lectures have been viewed on line about 2 million times yearly.On December 8, 2014, MIT announced that it had determined that Lewin engaged in online sexual harassment of an online MITx learner in violation of MIT's policies. As a consequence, MIT revoked Lewin's professor emeritus title and indefinitely removed his lectures from their online learning platforms. The lectures, which were released under the Creative Commons license, remain available on other websites.