Supernova Explosions, Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 2017
Astronomy and Astrophysics Library Series

David Branch received his Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Maryland in 1969.  He then served as Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Goddard Space Flight Center (1969), the California Institute of Technology (1969-70), and the Royal Greenwich Observatory, England, (1970-73).  During those years he worked on the spectroscopic determination of the relative abundances of the chemical elements in the Sun and stars, and began to work on the interpretation of the spectra of supernovae.  In 1973 he joined the faculty of the University of Oklahoma as Assistant Professor and became Full Professor in 1981.  From 1985 to 1990 he served as Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy.  In 1987 he received the career appointment of George Lynn Cross Research Professor.  During his tenure at Oklahoma he also held Visiting-Professor appointments at the University of Texas (1979-80), Oxford University (1980), the University of California, Santa Cruz (1984), and the University of Munich (1987), as well as Visiting Senior Scientist appointments at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (1991) and the International School of Advanced Studies, Trieste, Italy (1997).  He is a member of the American Astronomical Society and the International Astronomical Union.  He received the Senior United States Scientist Award of the Alexander Humboldt Foundation, Germany (1988) and the Distinguished Alumnus Award of the Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland (2004).  He has published more than 300 refereed scientific papers.  At the University of Oklahoma, his research has concentrated on advancing our understanding of the physics of supernova explosions, with emphasis on the interpretation of the spectra of supernovae.  He was an early and persistent advocate of using supernovae to determine the history of the expansion rate of the universe.