|
|
CXC Biographies: Richard McCray
Professor, University of Colorado
 Richard McCray received his Ph.D. in theoretical
physics from UCLA in 1967. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Caltech
(1967-68) and an Assistant Professor at the Harvard College
Observatory (1968-71). In 1971, he moved to the Joint Institute for
Laboratory Astrophysics at the University of Colorado at Boulder,
where he is now George Gamow Distinguished Professor of Astrophysical
and Planetary Sciences.
In 1983 Prof. McCray was awarded a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship
and in 1990 he received the Dannie S. Heinemann Prize for
Astrophysics of the American Physical Society. In 1989 he was elected
to National Academy of Sciences. In 1996 he was appointed Concurrent
Professor of Astronomy at Nanjing University.
Prof. McCray's research is in the theory of the dynamics of the
interstellar gas, and theory of cosmic X-ray sources. For the past 13
years, a primary focus of his research has been the theory and
observations of Supernova 1987A. He and his students predicted the
early emergence of X-rays from this supernova, they explained the
evolution of the supernova spectrum, and they predicted the radiation
from the impact of the supernova debris with its circumstellar matter
that we are observing today with the Chandra and Hubble
Telescope.
[ Press Index ] [ Interviews ]
|
