Description: As the definitive history of the AAVSO, this text will interest amateur and professional astronomers, historians and sociologists alike.
Brief description: Tom Williams is the AAVSO Historian and has served in AAVSO leadership positions for over 20 years, including twice as president. He earned a Ph.D. in History from Rice University in 2000, after spending over thirty years as an industrial chemist and manufacturing manager. Since then, Dr Williams has served as a senior editor for the Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers (Springer, 2007) and has written forty-three entries for that work. Over the past twenty-five years he has published book chapters, encyclopedia entries and over thirty articles and book reviews.
Review Quotes: "Advancing Variable Star Astronomy gives a rich, thoroughly documented account of a century of progress, through times of exhilaration and a period of traumatic stress. It is both fascinating and instructive." Owen Gingerich, Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and of the History of Science, Harvard University