लेखक: Dennis Schatz

Andrew Fraknoi is an award-winning scientist and educator, known for his skill in interpreting astronomical discoveries and ideas in everyday language. Fraknoi retired in 2017 as the Chair of the Astronomy Department at Foothill College and now teaches introductory astronomy and physics at the Fromm Institute of the University of San Francisco and through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at San Francisco State University. In 2007, he was selected as Professor of the Year for the state of California by the Carnegie Endowment for Higher Education. He has given more than 400 public lectures over the years, in such venues as the Commonwealth Club of California, the Celebrity Forum Lectures at Flint Theater, the Carmel Authors and Ideas Festival, the San Diego Comic Fest, the Century Club, the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City, and Skepti CAL (the California convention of skeptics). A prolific writer, Fraknoi is the lead author of Astronomy, a nationally-adopted introductory college textbook, published free on-line by Open Stax with support from the Gates Foundation and others. (It is now the most widely used astronomy textbook in the U.S.)  He is also the editor of two award-winning guides for teachers, The Universe at Your Fingertips and Solar Science. He has written two children’s book on astronomy, Disney’s Wonderful World of Space, and When the Sun Goes Dark. With Dr. Sidney Wolff, he was the founding editor of Astronomy Education Review, an on-line journal/magazine about astronomy education. Recently, he has started writing short science-fiction stories extrapolating astronomical ideas; eight of his stories have been published so far.