Maran, Stephen - Biography

Dr. Stephen P. Maran is Assistant Director of Space Sciences for Information and Outreach at the NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland and the Press Officer of the American Astronomical Society. An investigator of stars, nebulae, and comets, he has worked in recent years on the Hubble Space Telescope, the ASTRO-1 and -2 missions of the Space Shuttles Columbia and Endeavour, and other NASA projects in astronomy and space science.

Dr. Maran joined the Goddard Space Flight Center full time in January 1969, following earlier part time service at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies during 1961-1964.

Maran was the 1999 recipient of the Klumpke-Roberts Award for "outstanding contributions to the public understanding and appreciation of astronomy," presented by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. He was also a 1991 recipient of the NASA Medal for Exceptional Achievement.

In March 2000, the Small Bodies Name Committee of the International Astronomical Union conferred the name "Stephenmaran" on Minor Planet 9768, an estimated 7-km-wide asteroid in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, in recognition of Dr. Maran.

Representing NASA, Dr. Maran has addressed subcommittees of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.N. Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. He is the author of over 340 scientific papers and popular articles written since 1963, including many contributions to SMITHSONIAN and NATURAL HISTORY magazines.

His articles have also appeared in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, POPULAR SCIENCE, SCIENCE YEAR, WORLD BOOK YEARBOOK, the ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITTANICA YEARBOOK OF SCIENCE AND THE FUTURE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THE WORLD&I MAGAZINE and other periodicals.

A Contributing Editor of AIR&SPACE/SMITHSONIAN, magazine of the National Air and Space Museum, Dr. Maran is a frequent consultant on astronomical publications for the National Geographic Society, Time-Life Books, Microsoft Encarta, and other publishers. In 1997, he was named an Editorial Advisor of ASTRONOMY & GEOPHYSICS, published by the Royal Astronomical Society, and to the Editorial Advisory Board of ASTRONOMY magazine. Since 1981, he has been a Harlow Shapley Lecturer for the American Astronomical Society, speaking on astronomy and space science at colleges and universities around the United States. He was the A. Dixon Johnson Lecturer in Scientific Communication for 1990 at Pennsylvania State University and also addressed this topic by invitation at the Annual Meeting of the National Academy of Engineering for 1998.

Dr. Maran is a member of three commissions of the International Astronomical Union (dealing respectively with radio astronomy, comets, and astronomy from satellites), and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is editor-in-chief of THE ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS ENCYCLOPEDIA, published in 1991 by Van Nostrand Reinhold and Cambridge University Press, and has written or edited nine other books, including, in 1981, A MEETING WITH THE UNIVERSE (coedited with Dr. Bevan French), which sold over 130,000 copies through the U.S. Government Printing Office and commercial bookstores. GEMS OF HUBBLE, subtitled "Superb images from the Hubble Space Telescope" (coauthored with Dr. Jacqueline Mitton), was published by Cambridge University Press in 1996.

His latest book, ASTRONOMY FOR DUMMIES, the first science book in the well known "Dummies" series, was published in November 1999 by IDG Books Worldwide. A German edition has since appeared, and Chinese and French editions were authorized. A lecturer on ocean cruises, Maran has spoken aboard the Cunard Line's Queen Elizabeth 2 during the appearance of Halley's Comet in April, 1986 and at the Total Eclipse of the Sun in the Java Sea in March, 1988, and on Cunard's Vistafjord at the Total Eclipse in the Pacific in March 1998. In connection with the solar eclipse of November 1984 over the Coral Sea, he lectured in Tahiti, New Caledonia, and New Zealand. At the eclipse of July 1991, he lectured on shore in La Paz, Baja California, Mexico. On board Sitmar Line's Fairwind, he spoke at the Total Eclipse of the Sun in the eastern Pacific in October 1977.

Dr. Maran received the B.S. in Physics at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York in 1959, and earned the M.A. (1961) and Ph.D. (1964) in Astronomy from the University of Michigan. He was previously employed at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Tucson, Arizona and has taught Astronomy at the University of California, Los Angeles and at the University of Maryland. He was born in 1938 in Brooklyn, New York and is married to Sally Scott Maran, a journalist. They have three children.