B.S. Rensselaer (1964)
Ph.D. Maryland (1969)
I am working on the interpretation of the spectroscopic, photometric and statistical properties of supernovae. One goal is to learn how to infer the physical conditions of the ejected matter - the temperature, density, velocity, chemical composition, and mass. By comparing this information with the predictions of theoretical explosion models, we try to find out which kinds of stars produce the various observed supernova types and how they explode. A related goal is to use supernovae as distance indicators, to measure the expansion history of the universe.
