Handbook of Supernovae

Born in Iraq in 1945, Dr. Alsabti moved to the UK on a scholarship to the University of Manchester. He obtained his BSc in Mathematical Physics in 1967, his MSc in 1968 (Astrophysics, Supernovae) and his PhD in 1970 (“Investigating very faint nebulosities associated with non-thermal galactic radio sources”). He now works at University College London, in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Dr. Alsabti's research interests are in the origin and evolution of supernovae and interstellar matter. Dr. Alsabti was also a Professor of Physics at Baghdad University and founded the Baghdad Planetarium and Iraqi National Observatory.

He has been an active member of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) since 1973, and is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS). In the IAU, he is a member of the Advanced Development Projects Group. Dr. Alsabti is also a member of the World Space Observatory Committee, and a consultant to the Cornwall Observatory and Planetarium Project.

Educated at the Universities of Oxford and Rochester, NY, Paul Murdin has worked as an astronomer in the USA, Australia, England, Scotland and in Spain, where he led the operation of the Anglo-Dutch Isaac Newton Group of telescopes in the Canary Islands. He has been a research scientist (studying supernovae, neutron stars and black holes – in 1972 Paul discovered the nature of the first black hole known in our galaxy, Cygnus X-1) and a science administrator for the UK Government and the Royal Astronomical Society. He works at the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge, England, and is Visiting Professor at John Moores University, Liverpool.

He has a secondary career as a broadcaster and commentator for the BBC and CNN, as well as a lecturer and writer on astronomy, including repeat appearances on BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time and at a number of literary and science festivals, like those at Hay-on-Wye and Edinburgh, and on the Cunard liner Queen Elizabeth 2.  His most recent books include Secrets of the Universe: How We Discovered the Universe (Thames and Hudson, 2009), Mapping the Universe (Carlton, 2011), and Are We Being Watched? The Search for Life in the Cosmos (Thames and Hudson, 2013).