August 24, 1994 Contact: Robert Irion (408/459-2495)

ROBERT KRAFT OF UCSC TO HEAD WORLD'S FOREMOST ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SANTA CRUZ, CA--The executive committee of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has selected astronomer Robert P. Kraft, former director of the UC Observatories/Lick Observatory and professor emeritus at UC Santa Cruz, as the new president-elect of the IAU. Committee members announced their decision today (August 24) at the IAU's general assembly in The Hague, Netherlands.

Kraft will serve as president-elect until 1997, president from 1997 to 2000, and past president from 2000 to 2003. He will become just the fifth American astronomer elevated to the presidency in the IAU's 75-year history.

"It is a great honor to join this list of famous names that have presided over the IAU," says Kraft. The first American IAU president, he notes, also was a Lick Observatory director: W. W. Campbell, who served from 1922 to 1925. Kraft adds that another American president of the IAU--noted astronomer Otto Struve (1952-55)-- was his major professor while Kraft was a graduate student at UC Berkeley.

Kraft is no stranger to the upper echelons of the IAU, having served as one of the union's six vice presidents from 1982 to 1988. In his new role he will help oversee the operations of the union, which has some 7,300 members in 61 countries. Founded in Brussels in 1919 and now headquartered in Paris, the IAU develops, promotes, and safeguards the interests of astronomy through international cooperation. Several dozen IAU commissions, each with its own president, coordinate research efforts worldwide in various fields. All members convene triennially at the general assemblies.

Among many career accomplishments, Kraft is perhaps best known for demonstrating that all novae and dwarf novae are special types of binary stars, in which one star's atmosphere overflows onto the surface of a compact companion, such as a white dwarf, and periodically explodes. He also showed that when a star like the sun reaches a certain age, it spins slower and slower as a solar wind removes material from the star and carries away angular momentum. In recent years Kraft has conducted detailed studies of the compositions of stars, especially within the vast groupings called globular clusters. He has shown that a dredging up of material from the deep interiors of many of these stars changes the observed abundances of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen to an unexpected degree.

Kraft, 67, earned his B.S. and M.S. in mathematics from the University of Washington and his Ph.D. in astronomy from UC Berkeley. He rose to prominence in the 1960s as an astronomer at the Mt. Wilson and Palomar Observatories in Pasadena. In 1967, Kraft came to Lick Observatory and UCSC. Soon thereafter, he was elected to both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he served as president of the American Astronomical Society from 1974 to 1976. Kraft headed Lick Observatory as acting director for brief periods in the late 1960s and early 1970s and as director from 1981 to 1991. During his tenure he contributed to the UC effort to bring about the W. M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, now home to the world's largest optical telescope. He retired from UCSC as professor of astronomy and astrophysics in 1992 but maintains an active research program.

Editor's note: A photograph of Kraft is available from the UCSC Public Information Office. You may reach Kraft after August 29 at (408) 459-3281.

This release is also available on UC NewsWire, the University of California's electronic news service. To access by modem, dial (209) 244-6971.

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