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Astronomy professor honored for research |
| By
Vicki L. Kroll |
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Apr 27, 2005 |
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| Dr. Steven Federman |
Dr. Steven Federman is a star researcher. The astronomy professor received the Sigma Xi/Dion D. Raftopoulos Award for Outstanding Research for studying interstellar clouds to find out how stars are formed.
He picked up a plaque and check for $1,500 at the Sigma Xi annual banquet April 16.
Federman uses spectroscopy to study the physical environment of interstellar gas clouds where stars are born. He makes many measurements with telescopes at the McDonald Observatory at the University of Texas at Austin, the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer and the Hubble Space Telescope. To help interpret data, he acquires lab data on atoms and molecules. He also investigates isotopic ratios to understand the sites where elements are produced by nuclear reactions.
“Dr. Federman has studied atomic and molecular processes in interstellar space using high-resolution visible and UV spectroscopy for 25 years. The main recent interests in his observational program have been light element synthesis and chemical fractionation in carbon monoxide,” wrote one nominator. “The work on isotope ratios is clarifying the relative importance of various processes that synthesize the light elements.”
“This combination of original research in the distinct fields of theory, experiment and observation is very rare among active scientists,” noted another nominator. “In this way, Federman has been able to make significant contributions to our understanding of the chemical and physical nature of interstellar clouds, with decisive implications for theories of nuclear synthesis, star formation and planet formation.”
Since 1990, Federman has received grants totaling $1.7 million for his research. He has written 85 papers for scientific journals and 38 for conference proceedings. He is the topical editor for atomic and molecular spectroscopy for the Journal of the Optical Society of America B and vice president of the International Astronomical Union’s Commission 14 on Atomic and Molecular Data.
In 2002, the native of Queens, N.Y., was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society.
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