Doug Duncan is the director of the largest planetarium between
Chicago and the Pacific, Fiske Planetarium at the University
of Colorado. Previously he held dual appointments at the Department
of Astronomy and Astrophysics of the University of Chicago and
Chicago's Adler Planetarium, where he helped begin a trend of
modernizing planetariums that has spread to New York, Denver,
and beyond. He served as national Education Coordinator for
the American Astronomical Society, the society that represents
the 6,000 professional astronomers in the US. In that capacity
he led efforts for better teaching and public communication
throughout the United States.
Before
moving to Chicago, he was a staff astronomer at the Space Telescope
Science Institute (STSI) where he was responsible for one of
the Hubble Telescope's original instruments. While at STSI,
he was one of 5 astronomers who organized the 1992 meeting "Women
in Astronomy," the first to examine whether men and women have
equal access to astronomy careers.
Dr.
Duncan's research studies the oldest known stars - "fossil stars"
- which date back almost to the time of the Big Bang. These
have provided direct evidence of the explosive birth of our
Milky Way galaxy and shed light on conditions at the time of
the Big Bang. He has worked at the Lick Observatory, California's
Mt. Wilson and Palomar Observatories, and at Las Campanas Observatory
in Chile. He was part of a group that discovered sunspot cycles
on other stars, similar to the 11-year cycle seen on the Sun.
Some of his most interesting work involved the discovery that
when the Sun was young it may have been spinning much faster
than it is today, throwing off material and radiating strong
ultraviolet and x-rays. This may well have affected the earth
when it was young and even the development of life.
Dr.
Duncan is a national leader in presenting the excitement of
scientific discoveries to the public. He has appeared on BBC
television and served extensively as science commentator on
National Public Radio. His recent book, Clickers in the Classroom,
describes the remarkable way in which inexpensive wireless technology
is being used to enhance science teaching.
Dr.
Duncan has led groups of people to photograph Halley's Comet
in South America, to many total eclipses, and into the Arctic
to photograph the aurora. His photography has been published
by National Geographic. In April 1993 he traveled to the North
Pole, and was elected to The Explorers Club in 1991.
Dr. Doug Duncan 