Essential Cosmic Perspective

1958-11-25

Dr. Jeffrey O. Bennett holds a B.A. (1981) in Biophysics from the University of California, San Diego, and an M.S. and Ph.D. (1987) in Astrophysics from the University of Colorado, Boulder. He has taught at every level from preschool through graduate school, including more than 50 college classes in astronomy, physics, mathematics, and education. He served 2 years as a visiting senior scientist at NASA headquarters, where he created NASA's "IDEAS" program, started a program to fly teachers aboard NASA's airborne observatories (including SOFIA), and worked on numerous educational programs for the Hubble Space Telescope and other space science missions. He also proposed the idea for and helped…

5 December 1962

Megan E. Donahue is an astrophysicist, astronomer, and university teacher. She is a Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Michigan State University (MSU), East Lansing, Michigan. Her current research is mainly about using X-ray, UV, infrared, and visible light to study clusters of galaxies: their contents—dark matter, hot gas, galaxies, active galactic nuclei—and what they reveal about the contents of the universe and how galaxies form and evolve. She grew up on a farm in Nebraska and received an S.B. in Physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she began her research career as an X-ray astronomer. She earned a Ph.D. in Astrophysics…

17 December 1956

Nicholas M. Schneider, born in Appleton, Wisconsin, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, and a researcher in the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, Boulder, Colorado. He received his B.A. in Physics and Astronomy from Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, in 1979, and his Ph.D. in Planetary Science from the University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, in 1988. In 1991, he received the National Science Foundation’s Presidential Young Investigator Award. His research interests include planetary atmospheres and planetary astronomy, with a focus on the odd case of Jupiter’s moon Io. He en…