Dr. John (Jack) Harvey, is an Astronomer at the National Solar Observatory in Tucson, Arizona. He was raised in sunny North Hollywood, California where he developed early interests in astronomy and telescope building. With like-minded friends he enjoyed star parties away from the bright lights of Los Angeles. He became especially interested in the Sun and landed a 1959 summer job at Lockheed Solar Observatory while attending the University of California. There he learned the practical and formal ways of building instruments and the joy of studying the Sun. Part-time work at Lockheed and Mt. Wilson Observatory continued until he moved to graduate school at the University of Colorado where he completed his Ph.D. in 1969. He then joined the solar program at the Kitt Peak National Observatory and has remained there through organizational changes for his entire career.
Harvey is fascinated by solar magnetism as the engine of all solar activity, and by the structure and motions of solar matter from the deep interior outward into the corona. He has been very lucky to have skilled and generous colleagues with whom much of his research was done. Harvey’s work includes the discovery that magnetic fields are present everywhere on the solar surface and constitute the vast majority of solar magnetic flux. He made the first measurements of magnetic fields in the solar corona. He also helped to demonstrate that in and around sunspots, magnetic fields change suddenly with the occurrence of violent eruptions such as solar flares. He designed and built equipment to measure solar magnetic fields.
When it became clear that the Sun is oscillating in ways that allow its sub-surface conditions to be probed, he joined with other colleagues to find the Sun’s inner rotation to be different than expected. Long, continuous observations provide better information about conditions inside the Sun. To get such observations, Harvey and his colleagues went to South Pole five times with instruments that he designed. Among the results of these observations were the first measurements of mass flows beneath sunspots. Harvey then designed the instrument used in an international network of six identical units that have been continuously recording solar oscillations since 1995.
Harvey’s interest in the corona started with his first total eclipse observations in 1963 and continued at four subsequent total eclipses. Shortly after space x-ray observations showed that so-called coronal holes are major influence on space weather, Harvey discovered that these features could be detected from the ground. He started a program of such observations in 1974 that continues today.
Harvey has served on numerous NSF, NASA and National Research Council committees. He was Chairperson of the Solar Physics Division of the American Astronomical Society, President of the Solar Commission of the International Astronomical Union, and is past co-editor of the international journal Solar Physics. He received NASA’s 1991 Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal, NSF’s Antarctic Service Medal, the 1999 George Ellery Hale medal of the American Astronomical Society, and the National Academy of Sciences’ 2011 Arctowski Medal. Minor planet 26924 was named Johnharvey by the International Astronomical Union and a mountain in Antarctica was named Harvey Summit by the US Board of Geographic Names. Harvey has had a dream career and looks forward to sharing another glorious total solar eclipse with other solar enthusiasts.
Dr. Keen is a meteorologist who has taught classes and researched climate change, weather, and severe storms at the University of Colorado, National Center for Atmospheric Research, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Park Service, Juneau (Alaska) Ice Field Research Program, and the U.S. Army. He is the author and co-author of more than a dozen books, including Skywatch West: The Complete Weather Guide and The Audubon Society Pocket Guide to Clouds and Storms. His research papers on climate topics (such as el Nino. glaciers, and volcanoes) have been published in major journals, including Science, Monthly Weather Review, Journal of Climate, Annals of Glaciology, Geophysical Monographs, Bulletin of the Global Volcanism Network, and International Comet Quarterly. He is currently an expert reviewer for the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Climate Assessment Report.
An avid “chaser” of natural phonomena (especially those in the sky), Keen has seen four total solar eclipses, four annular eclipses, 24 total lunar eclipses, 230 comets, 40 tornadoes, the eyes of two hurricanes, and 2 erupting volcanoes.
Keen also enjoys photographing the sky, and his cloud photographs have appeared in the WMO International Cloud Atlas and on United States postage stamps. He now resides in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, where he records 4-foot snow storms at a high altitude weather station for the National Weather Service, continuing a tradition of volunteer climate observation begun by Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.
Higher in the sky, Keen co-discovered Nova Cygni, the brightest “new star” in the past 70 years, and is honored with a mountain-sized asteroid, (4129) Richelen, bearing his (and his wife’s) name. He has spotted the asteroid with his home built 12-inch telescope.
Lawrence Krauss is Foundation Professor, Director, Origins Initiative, and Co-Director, Cosmology Initiative of the School of Earth and Space Exploration, Beyond Center, and Department of Physics, Arizona State University.
Dr. Krauss was born in New York City and shortly afterward moved to Toronto, spending his childhood in Canada. He received undergraduate degrees in Mathematics and Physics from Carleton University in 1977, and his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1982. He became an assistant professor at Yale University in 1985. He was named the Ambrose Swasey Professor of Physics, Professor of Astronomy, and was Chairman of the Department of Physics at Case Western Reserve University from 1993 to 2005.
His research has been based on an attempt to explore how phenomena at various extremes of scale can be used to probe fundamental physics. Dr. Krauss has become increasingly interested in utilizing the Universe as a laboratory to study fundamental physics. He has been active in the emerging field of particle astrophysics, in which both the cosmological implications of ideas concerning fundamental interactions, and astrophysical and cosmological constraints on particle physics are explored.
Among the areas in which Krauss’ research has focused are: neutrino physics and astrophysics, big bang nucleosynthesis, gravitational lensing, dark matter theory and detection, particle physics phenomenology beyond the Standard Model, axions and the strong CP problem, symmetry breaking in the Standard Model and the cosmology and physics of the electroweak phase transition, ultra-sensitive laboratory probes of new physics at high energy scales, stellar evolution, general relativity and gravitation, early universe physics, gravitational waves, and the physics of black holes and quantum gravity. Krauss is a critic of string theory.
Among Dr. Krauss’ honors are the highest awards of all three major U.S. Physics Societies: the American Physical Society, the American Association of Physics Teachers, and the American Institute of Physics. Krauss received the Gravity Research Foundation First prize award in 1984, the Presidential Investigator Award in 1986, the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Award for the Public Understanding of Science and Technology in 2000, the Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize and Andrew Gemant Award in 2001, the American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award in 2002, the Oersted Medal in 2003, and the American Physical Society Joseph P. Burton Forum Award in 2005.
Dr. Krauss believes that science is in part a vital cultural activity and so regularly appears in national media for public outreach in science and has written many editorials for The New York Times. In 2009–10 he wrote a monthly column for Scientific American. He has been particularly active in issues of science and society, leading the effort by scientists to defend the teaching of science in public schools and is is co-chair of the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and on the Board of Directors of the Federation of American Scientists.
Dr. Krauss has written non-academic books, among them:
Fade to Black: The Night Sky of the Future
Science Talk: Stars of Cosmology
Part 1
Part 2
60-Second Science Podcast: Future Cosmologists Doomed to Err
Please visit Dr. Krauss’ website for a complete list of publications and activities.
Robert Naeye is Editor in Chief of Sky & Telescope, the world’s most respected and influential popular astronomy magazine. Robert earned a master’s degree in science journalism from Boston University in 1992, and later worked on the editorial staffs of Discover and Astronomy magazines. He served as Editor in Chief of Mercury magazine (published by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific) from 2000 to 2003. He worked as a Senior Editor at Sky & Telescope from 2003 to 2007, before moving to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center to work as a Senior Science Writer for the Astrophysics Science Division. He returned to Sky & Telescope in June 2008 to serve as Editor in Chief.
Robert is the author of two books: Through the Eyes of Hubble: The Birth, Life, and Violent Death of Stars (Kalmbach, 1997) and Signals from Space: The Chandra X-ray Observatory (Turnstone, 2000). He has contributed to two other books, and has won several awards for his writing and outreach activities.
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