astronomy

Stephen E. Thorsett

Stephen E. Thorsett is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Stephen E. Thorsett rather than just read about it. In short: Stephen Erik Thorsett (born December 3, 1964) is an American academic and astronomer serving as the president of Willamette University. His research interests include radio pulsars and gamma-ray bursts.

Key takeaways

Stephen E. Thorsett belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Stephen E. Thorsett to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Stephen E. Thorsett from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Stephen Erik Thorsett (born December 3, 1964) is an American academic and astronomer serving as the president of Willamette University. His research interests include radio pulsars and gamma-ray bursts. He is known for measurements of the masses of neutron stars and for the use of binary pulsars to test the theory of general relativity. Thorsett was a professor and dean at the University of California, Santa Cruz, before becoming president of Willamette University in July 2011.

Early life and education Thorsett and his twin brother, David Thorsett, were born in New Haven, Connecticut, to Grant Thorsett and his wife, Karen. Stephen grew up in Salem, Oregon, where his father was a biology professor at Willamette University. After attending elementary school and junior high in Salem, he graduated from South Salem High School in 1983. During his youth, he earned money picking berries and with several jobs at Willamette. Following high school, he attended Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics in 1987, graduating summa cum laude. Thorsett then pursued graduate studies at Princeton University, where he received a Ph.D. in physics in 1991 after completing a doctoral dissertation, titled "Observing millisecond and binary pulsars", under the supervision of Dan Stinebring and Joseph Taylor. With graduate school classmates Nathan Newbury, Michael J. Newman, John Ruhl, and Suzanne Staggs he is the author of the textbook Princeton Problems in Physics while at Princeton in 1991.

Career After graduation from Princeton, he was a Robert A. Millikan Research Fellow in physics at Caltech and an assistant professor of physics at Princeton. He received the Ernest F. Fullam Award of the Dudley Observatory in 1994, and was named an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow in 1997. In 1999, he was hired at the University of California, Santa Cruz as a professor of astronomy and astrophysics. Thorsett was named dean of the school's Division of Physical and Biological Sciences on July 1, 2006. In 2004, with collaborators Ingrid Stairs and Zaven Arzoumanian, he made the first measurement of gravitational spin-orbit coupling in a binary system. He helped discover the oldest known extrasolar planet and was the first to suggest that a nearby gamma-ray burst might cause a mass extinction event. He is a co-editor of three volumes for the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. He is also a collaborator on the upcoming Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array x-ray satellite experiment. On May 14, 2011, he was named as the 25th president of Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. He assumed the position on July 1, 2011, replacing M. Lee Pelton who had resigned to take the presidency at another college.

References

External links Web site

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Stephen E. Thorsett

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Stephen E. Thorsett claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Stephen E. Thorsett before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Stephen E. Thorsett ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Stephen E. Thorsett

In research: Stephen E. Thorsett appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Stephen E. Thorsett in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Stephen E. Thorsett is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1964 births, Alumni of Worcester College, Oxford, American astronomers, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Stephen E. Thorsett outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Ask Teacher Smith questions about this articleOpens your AI tutor with a question about “Stephen E. Thorsett” →

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Stephen E. Thorsett in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Stephen E. Thorsett means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Stephen E. Thorsett out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Stephen E. Thorsett in simple terms?

Why does Stephen E. Thorsett matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Stephen E. Thorsett?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Stephen E. Thorsett.