Biographical Sketch

James B. (Jim) Kaler, Professor Emeritus of Astronomy, earned his A.B. at the University of Michigan, his Ph.D. at UCLA, and has been at the University of Illinois since 1964. His research area, in which he has published over 120 papers, involves dying stars. Prof. Kaler has held Fulbright and Guggenheim Fellowships, has been awarded medals for his work from the University of Liège in Belgium and the University of Mexico, gave both the Armand Spitz Lecture to the Great Lakes Planetarium Association and the Margaret Noble Address to the Middle Atlantic Planetarium Society, and received the 2003 Campus Award for Excellence in Public Engagement. He has written for a variety of popular and semi-popular magazines, was a consultant for Time-Life Books on their "Voyage Through the Universe" series, appears frequently on Illinois television and radio, and has published several books, including "Stars and their Spectra," "The Ever-Changing Sky," and "Extreme Stars" (Cambridge), "Stars" and "Cosmic Clouds" (Scientific American Library), two textbooks, and "The Little Book of Stars" and "The Greatest Hundred Stars" (Copernicus). His latest book is "The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Stars." He is currently President of the Board of Directors of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and is a past president of the Board of the Champaign-Urbana Symphony. Asteroid 1998 JK was named "17853 Kaler" in honor of his outreach activities.