Roger A. Freedman is on the faculty of the Department of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He grew up in San Diego, California and was an undergraduate at the University of California campuses in San Diego and Los Angeles. He did his doctoral research in nuclear theory and its astrophysical applications at Stanford University under the direction of Professor J. Dirk Walecka. Dr. Freedman came to UCSB in 1981 after three years of teaching and doing research at the University of Washington.

Dr. Freedman holds a commercial pilot’s license, and when not teaching or writing he can frequently be found flying with his wife, Caroline. He has flown across the United States and Canada.

William J. Kaufmann III was the author of the first four editions of Universe. Born in New York City on December 27, 1942, he often visited the magnificent Hayden Planetarium as he was growing up. Dr. Kaufmann earned his bachelor’s degree magna cum laude in physics from Adelphi University in 1963, a master’s degree in physics from Rutgers in 1965, and a Ph.D. in astrophysics from Indiana University in 1968. At 27 he became the youngest director of any major planetarium in the United States when he took the helm of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. During his career he also held positions at San Diego State University, UCLA, Caltech, and the University of Illinois. Throughout his professional life as a scientist and educator, Dr. Kaufmann worked to bridge the gap between the scientific community and the general public to help the public share in the advances of astronomy. A prolific author, his many books include Black Holes and Warped Spacetime, Relativity and Cosmology, The Cosmic Frontiers of General Relativity, Exploration of the Solar System, Planets and Moons, Stars and Nebulas, Galaxies and Quasars, and Supercomputing and the Transformation of Science. Dr. Kaufmann died in 1994.