David N. Schramm
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About David N. Schramm

David N. Schramm co-founded the Theoretical Astrophysics Group at Fermilab and continued a long association with the group until his tragic death in an airplane crash in 1997. Schramm received his PhD from Caltech and went on to become the Vice President for Research and the Louis Block Distinguished Service Professor in the Physical Sciences at the University of Chicago. At Chicago, he was a Professor in the Department of Physics, the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, the Committee on Conceptual Foundations of Science, the Enrico Fermi Institute, and the College.

His research covered a variety of topics in theoretical astrophysics and cosmology including supernovae, dark matter, the age of the universe and the origin of elements. He is perhaps best known for his work unifying the fields of big bang cosmology and elementary particle physics.

Schramm, who was elected to the National Academy of Science in 1986, and fellowship in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1994, and the Hungarian Academy of Science and the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1995, and was a fellow of the American Physical Society since 1975, was the recipient of numerous awards including the 1st annual Robert J. Trumpler Award of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific in 1976, the 1978 Helen B. Warner Prize of the American Astronomical Society, the 1980 Gravity Research Prize, the 1984 Richtmeyer Memorial Award of the American Association of Physics Teachers, the 1989 Einstein Medal from Etvs University in Budapest, Hungary, and the 1993 Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society.

His numerous published writings included over 300 scientific articles, several dozen non-technical articles and book reviews, and over a dozen books, including From Quarks to the Cosmos: Tools of Discovery with Leon Lederman, a Scientific American Library Book (New York, W.H. Freeman, 1989) and Shadows of Creation with E.M. Riordan, forward by S. Hawking (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1990).