Supernova Explosions / Astronomy and Astrophysics Library (PDF)

Institute of Technology from 1969 to 1971 and Assistant Professor of Astronomy at Harvard from 1971 to 1974. In 1974, he joined the University of Texas at Austin as Associate Professor of Astronomy. He became Full Professor in 1980, was appointed the Samuel T. and Fern Yanagisawa Regents Professor of Astronomy in 1985 and was Chair of the Department from 1986 to 1990. He has won a number of teaching awards, was appointed to the Academy of Distinguished Teachers in 2002, and received the state-wide Regents Award for Outstanding Teaching in 2010. He has published over 350 refereed scientific papers, a popular book on supernovae and gamma-ray bursts (Cosmic Catastrophes), two novels, and has edited six books. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (JILA) in 1979 and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science in 1983, AURA/NOAO Visiting Professor in 1990, and a Fulbright Fellow in Italy in 1991. He is a long-time member of the Aspen Center for Physics and has done stints as Trustee there. He was a member of the Executive Committee of the Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics for twenty years. He has served on a number of agency advisory committees, including those for the National Science Foundation for which he chaired the Committee of Visitors of the Astronomy Division in 2005, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for which he chaired the Senior Review of Operating Missions in 2010, and the National Research Council where he was Co-Chair of the Committee on the Origin and Evolution of Life from 2002 to 2005, a member of the Space Sciences Board from 2002 to 2006, a member of the Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics from 2012 to 2015, and a member of the Committee on A Strategy to Optimize the U.S. Optical and Infrared System in the Era of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope from 2014 to 2015. He has held many positions in the American Astronomical Society and was President of the Society from 2006 to 2008. His research interests span all aspects of supernovae, both theory and observations, thermonuclear and core collapse. He has also worked on closely related areas including late phases of stellar evolution, accretion disks, black holes, and astrobiology.