In Search of Dark Matter

Written for the educated non-scientist and scientist alike, it spans a variety of scientific disciplines, from observational astronomy to particle physics. Concepts that the reader will encounter along the way are at the cutting edge of scientific research. However the themes are explained in such a way that no prior understanding of science beyond a high school education is necessary.

Ken Freeman is Duffield Professor of Astronomy at the Australian National University (Research School of Astronomy & Astrophysics, Mount Stromlo Observatory) in Canberra. He studied mathematics at the University of Western Australia and theoretical astrophysics at the University of Cambridge, followed by a postdoctoral year at McDonald Observatory (University of Texas) with G. de Vaucouleurs and a year as a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. He returned to Australia in 1967 and has been there ever since.

His research interests are in the formation and dynamics of galaxies and globular clusters, and particularly in the problem of dark matter in galaxies: he was one of the first to point out (1970) that spiral galaxies contain a large fraction of dark matter. Since then, he has written many papers on dark matter in spiral and elliptical galaxies. He was a founding member of the MACHO collaboration which used microlensing techniques to search for galactic dark matter in the form of compact stellar-mass objects.

For his current research, he uses the optical and radio telescopes in Australia, and also observes with the Hubble Space Telescope and large optical telescopes in Spain, Chile, and Hawaii. He has written about 500 research articles.

Geoff McNamara has been writing about and teaching science and technology since the mid-1980s. He has had approximately 150 articles published in magazines ranging from Electronics Australia, Astronomy, Sky & Space, and Nature Australia.

In 1997 he coauthored a popular level science book 'Ripples on a Cosmic Sea - the search for gravitational waves' with Associate Professor David Blair (Allen & Unwin, 1997), and contributed a chapter to 'The Universe Revealed' (Mitchell Beazley, 1998).

He taught Ophthalmic Optics at Sydney Institute of Technology from 1987 to 1999, and has presented many courses and talks on astronomy for the public. He has been teaching science at Campbell High School in Canberra since 2000. In 2003 he began teaching Astronomy and the course has continued to grow in popularity. In 2005 the Astronomy courses were completed by approximately 130 students.