Dreams, Stars, and Electrons

Lyman Spitzer, Jr., is a leading astronomer whose work has revolutionized our understanding of interstellar space and plasma physics. In addition, his proposals for a large telescope in space led after many decades to the Hubble Space Telescope. Dreams, Stars, and Electrons contains some thirty of his papers, selected mainly for their relevance to present research. Some of these works have previously not been readily available. A commentary by the author, preceding each paper, gives interesting background information and summarizes some more recent work.


Part I of the book is devoted to twelve papers on the gas and dust in interstellar space, beginning with the author's theory (now accepted fact) that this interstellar material in spiral galaxies is the birthplace of young stars. The final interstellar paper summarizes the extensive results obtained by the Princeton/NASA Copernicus satellite. In Part II eight papers discuss problems of stellar dynamics, including systematic acceleration of stars in random passage near interstellar clouds. Other papers analyze the evolution of a spherical cluster in the absence of external perturbations. Part III deals primarily with the early development and present performance of the Hubble telescope; and Part IV, with plasma physics, including controlled fusion. More personal writings are included in Part V.