Stephen P. Maran, Ph.D., a 30-year veteran of the space program, is the 1999 recipient of the Klumpke-Roberts Award of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific for "outstanding contributions to the public understanding and appreciation of astronomy." He received the NASA Medal for Exceptional Achievement in 1991 and was the A. Dixon Johnson Lecturer in Scientific Communication at Pennsylvania State University in 1990. He's also taught astronomy at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Maryland, College Park. As press officer of the American Astronomical Society, he presides over media briefings that bring the news of astronomical discoveries to people worldwide.
Maran began practicing astronomy from rooftops in Brooklyn and a deserted golf course in the far reaches of the Bronx, and graduated to conduct professional research with telescopes at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, National Radio Astronomy Observatory in West Virginia, Palomar Observatory in California, and Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, as well as with instruments in space, including the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Ultraviolet Explorer. He's observed total eclipses of the Sun from the Gaspe Peninsula and elsewhere in Quebec, from Baja California in Mexico, and at sea off New Caledonia and Singapore, and in the eastern Pacific, as well as on shore in the good old U.S.A. In the course of spreading the good word about astronomy, Maran has lectured on black holes in a bar in Tahiti, and explained an eclipse of the Sun on NBC's Today show. He's also spoken on eclipse and comet cruises of Cunard's Queen Elizabeth 2 and Vistafjord and Sitmar Line's Fairwind. He's addressed audiences ranging from Seattle school children and Atherton, California, Girl Scouts to the National Academy of Engineering in Washington, D.C.
, and sub-committees of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.N. Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. Maran is editor of The Astronomy and Astrophysics Encyclopedia and has co-authored or edited eight other books on those subjects, including a college textbook, New Horizons in Astronomy, and two compendiums of space program discoveries, A Meeting with the Universe and Gems of Hubble. He has written many articles for Smithsonian and Natural History magazines, and has served as a writer and consultant for the National Geographic Society and Time-Life Books. He's a graduate of Stuyvesant High School in New York City, where he served a full season on the Math Team without incurring serious injury, and of Brooklyn College.
His M.A. and Ph.D. in astronomy are both from the University of Michigan. Maran is married to Sally Ann Scott, a journalist. They have three children.