Birth & Death of Star

He was born in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada and received his B.A Sc. from the University of Toronto and his PhD in Astronomy from the University of California, Berkeley.

He was Professor of Astronomy at Berkeley and Minnesota. He served as Provost and Dean of the College of Letters and Science at Berkeley and as Vice President of the University of Minnesota. He is a past president of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific and past Treasurer of the American Astronomical Society.   He was Visiting Professor at the Collège de France and received the Humboldt U.S. Senior Scientist Award at the University of Heidelberg.

He is a Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  He has also served on numerous national and international committees dealing with astronomy and science education, including the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy and the Space Telescope Science Institute.

His research interests were star formation and early stellar evolution: how stars and planets form out of interstellar gas and dust and their behavior and characteristics before nuclear reactions turn on; also radiative transfer in stellar atmospheres. He is the author of one book and almost 100 research articles.

He retired in 2005 and now lives in Cloverdale with his wife Mary Ellen and one dog.  He has two children and four grandchildren.

He is president of the Cloverdale Rotary Club and former member of the San Francisco Rotary Club.