Карл Крушельницкий: от беженца до популярного популяризатора науки

Australian science communicator

Karl Sven Woytek Sas Konkovitch Matthew Kruszelnicki (born 1948), often referred to as "Dr Karl", who is known as an author and a science commentator on Australian radio, television, and podcasts. Kruszelnicki is the Julius Sumner Miller Fellow in the Science Foundation for Physics at the School of Physics, University of Sydney.

Kruszelnicki was born in Helsingborg, Sweden, to Polish parents, Rina and Ludwik. Kruszelnicki's background was hidden from him for a long time, with his mother having told him that she was Swedish and a Lutheran but she was, in fact, Polish and Jewish. His father Ludwik, a Polish Gentile, was turned in to the Gestapo for smuggling Jews out of Poland and was imprisoned at Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp used mainly for political prisoners. As the end of World War II approached, Ludwik avoided execution by swapping identities with a dead person. Rina escaped the Auschwitz concentration camp when the Nazis ran out of Zyklon B that was used to gas prisoners. On arrival in Australia, the family were tenanted at the migrant camp in Bonegilla, Victoria. They remained there for three years before settling in the city of Wollongong, New South Wales. Kruszelnicki said his childhood as a refugee in Wollongong was difficult, and he was bullied at school; he said "anybody who was not an Irish Catholic was considered an outsider". Kruszelnicki attended Edmund Rice Christian Brothers College in Wollongong, New South Wales. After high school, he attended the University of Wollongong, completing a Bachelor of Science degree majoring in physics in 1968. In 1980, Kruszelnicki was awarded a Master of Biomedical Engineering degree at the University of New South Wales. He completed his Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery degrees at Sydney University in 1986. While working as a taxi driver in Sydney, he was beaten unconscious after picking up a passenger trying to escape a group of men. In the early 1980s, Kruszelnicki worked for ophthalmologist Fred Hollows. His Master of Biomedical Engineering degree allowed him to design and build a machine to pick up electrical signals off the human retina to diagnose certain eye diseases. Kruszelnicki commenced his degree in medicine at the University of Sydney at the age of 32, graduating in 1986. From here he began work at a number of hospitals around Sydney, including the Children's Hospital in Camperdown.

Kruszelnicki presented the first series of Quantum (replaced by Catalyst) in 1985. As a science communicator and presenter, he appears on the Seven Network's Weekend Sunrise and on ABC TV. From early 2008 to 2010 he co hosted a TV series called Sleek Geeks with Adam Spencer.

Kruszelnicki does a number of weekly radio shows and podcasts. His hour long show on ABC radio station Triple J has been going on in one form or another since 1981; this weekly science talkback show, Science with Dr Karl, is broadcast on Thursday mornings from 11:00 am to midday and attracts up to 300,000 listeners; it is also available as a podcast. Kruszelnicki also often helps with other science and education Triple J promotions such as the Sleek Geek Week roadshow with Adam Spencer and Caroline Pegram. He and Adam Spencer released the Sleek Geeks podcast regularly until December 2015. Also, Since 2016, he has hosted the podcast Shirtloads of Science. For many years, until March 2020, Kruszelnicki appeared on a live weekly late night link up on BBC Radio 5 Live's Up All Night, usually with Rhod Sharp, answering science questions. In 2017, he hosted Dr. Karl's Outrageous Acts of Science on Discovery Channel (Australia). Kruszelnicki writes a regular column for Australian Geographic magazine, called 'Need to Know', which is republished as a blog on the magazine's website. He has also written for the Sydney Morning Herald Good Weekend magazine.

Kruszelnicki was an unsuccessful candidate for the Australian Senate in the 2007 Australian federal election. He was placed number two on the Climate Change Coalition ticket in New South Wales. In 2015, Kruszelnicki appeared in an Australian Government advertising campaign for the recently published intergenerational report. He had previously agreed to do the campaign, believing it would be a "non political, bipartisan, independent report." After its publication, however, he backed away from the campaign, describing it as "flawed". "How can you possibly have a report that looks at the next 40 years and doesn't mention climate change? It should have acknowledged that climate change is real and we cause it and it will be messy."

Kruszelnicki met his wife Mary in his first year of medical school. They have three children together: Karl, Alice, and Lola. Kruszelnicki has prosopagnosia, meaning he lacks the ability to recognise faces. To help him recognise co workers, he has been known to carry a seating map of familiar office spaces. He puts the cause of his condition down to having an unhappy, lonely childhood, saying that it impeded the development of the part of his brain responsible for remembering faces.