Dr. James B. Kaler
Professor of Astronomy,
University of Illinois

Astronomy at the Century and Millennium.

The past century has brought spectacular advances in our knowledge of the cosmos. We seem to be at the edge of understanding the nature of the Universe. Yet astronomers, from Aristotle to Hubble, have always thought that necessary way. And always they have been surprised. What have the past 100 years, and especially the past decade, wrought? How close are we? What have we found and what mysteries remain? And what mysteries might yet be hidden from us? Spectacular new telescopes and technologies await, both to solve old problems and -- if the past is any predictor at all -- to find new mysteries we have yet to dream of.
 
 

James B. Kaler, Professor of Astronomy, earned his A.B. at the University of Michigan, his Ph.D. at UCLA, and has been at the University of Illinois since 1964. His research area, in which he has published over 100 papers, involves dying stars. Prof. Kaler has held Fulbright and Guggenheim Fellowships, has been awarded medals for his work from the University of Liege in Belgium and the University of Mexico, and most recently was selected to give the Armand Spitz Lecture by the Great Lakes Planetarium Association. He has written for a variety of popular and semi-popular magazines, was a consultant for Time-Life Books on their "Voyage Through the Universe" series, appears frequently on Illinois television and radio, and has published several books, including "Stars and their Spectra" (Cambridge), "Stars" (Scientific American Library), "Astronomy!" (HarperCollins), "The Ever-Changing Sky" (Cambridge), "Astronomy! A Brief Edition" (Addison-Wesley), and the recently completed "Cosmic Clouds" (also by Scientific American Library). He is a past president of the Board of the Champaign-Urbana Symphony.