Frank Shu And His Left Behind Physical Universe

Astronomer, physicist and author Frank Shu hail from the United States. Although Frank was born in Kunming (Yunnan), his hometown is Yongjia County in Wenzhou, Zhejiang. Shu Shien-Siu, Shu's father, was a mathematician and the Former President of the National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan (1970-1975).

1.     Frank H Shu earned his BS in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1963.

2.     With Chia-Chiao Lin, Frank developed a spiral density wave theory (governing spiral arms in galaxies) during his college days. After receiving his PhD from Harvard in 1968, he started publishing scientific papers.

3.     From 1984 to 1988, Frank Shu held the chair of the UC Berkeley astronomy department. He has taught at Stony Brook University and UC Berkeley.

4.     A vice president at National Tsing Hua University in February 2002, he was president until February 2006, as his father was.

5.     In 2006, he joined the physics faculty at UC San Diego as a distinguished professor. He holds the title of University Professor, an honour awarded to scholars who have been recognized as outstanding teachers throughout the UC system. Additionally, he is an emeritus professor at UC Berkeley.

6.     Frank Shu served as president of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) from 1994 to 1996.

7.     In addition to his research in astrophysics, he worked on the origin of meteorites, the early evolution of stars and spiral galaxies. A seminal paper he published in 1977 describes the collapse of a dense giant molecular cloud into a Star.

8.     Despite some criticism, this model provided the basis for more complex theories later developed about the formation of stars and planets.

9.     It begins with an isothermal sphere. This sphere collapses inside-out and then employs self-similarity. As an initial condition, it is unstable and therefore unphysical. But, it illustrates much of the physics and is the only analytic model available.

10. Additionally, Frank Shu studied the structure of planet-forming disks around very young stars, the jets and winds those stars and disks generate, and the production of chondrules, the inclusions in meteorites.

11.  The Shu Factory, a collection of postdoctoral fellows and graduate students, established a successful academic career, contributing much to his research.

In addition to Physical Universe: An Introduction to Astronomy, University Science Books, 1982 (now a standard textbook for undergraduate astrophysics courses worldwide), Frank Shu has also authored two volumes of The Physics of Astrophysics Vol-1.