Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1972

Professor, University of Toronto

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I am interested in the physical processes that occur in the atmospheres of individual stars. While stellar atmospheres are often used as tools for the study of "macro" topics, such as the evolution of the Galaxy or the extragalactic distance scale, and these applications interest me too, I am more intrigued by the "micro" astrophysics that takes place in the stellar atmosphere, which is an extremely complex boundary layer between the stellar interior and space. There are fundamental physical processes occurring in this environment that are still poorly understood because the scale, temperatures, pressures, velocities and magnetic fields cannot be recreated in terrestrial laboratories. My approach to these problems is primarily observational, although I also employ modeling.