by Michael Wright

Prof. Craig Wheeler Credit: J. C. Wheeler

Serendipitously, Prof. Craig Wheeler of the University of Texas will be in Princeton on Tuesday, February 11 and has agreed to speak to AAAP about the current supernova in M82.  AAAP is jointly sponsoring this meeting with our friends in the Princeton Astrophysics Department.     As usual, the meeting with begin at 8:00 p.m. in Peyton Hall, 4 Ivy Lane, Princeton.  Gene Ramsey has graciously agreed to yield the podium and postpone his talk originally schedule for Tuesday to April 8.  If the weather cooperates, we hope to observe the supernova after the talk.

J. Craig Wheeler is the Samuel T. and Fern Yanagisawa Regents Professor of Astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin, where he specializes in the astrophysics of violent events: supernovae, neutron stars, black holes, gamma-ray bursts and the relation of these events to astrobiology.  Prof. Wheeler has published about 200 papers in refereed journals and conference proceedings, has edited books on supernovae and accretion disks.  He published a popular astronomy book, “Cosmic Catastrophes: Supernovae, Gamma-Ray Bursts and Adventures in Hyperspace“.  Prof. Wheeler also wrote a novel, “The Krone Experiment“, and co-authored the screenplay, which was made into an independent film.