"Catch a Falling Star," the life story of Donald Clayton, follows the struggle of one human being to find love and to create scientific understanding of the origin of the atoms of chemical elements. Born on an Iowa farm, son of an aviation pioneer, he became the first among his family to attend college, then graduate school in physics at Caltech. His three marriages reveal his battle with sexual anxiety and a sense of loss. At the same time he struggled to discover new knowledge about the creation of the atoms of our bodies and our earth. His close friendship with two great pioneers of the origin of matter enlivened his scientific life in the United States and Europe. His discoveries created two new fields of astronomy whose beginnings are featured in the book.

Clayton's autobiography chronicles the exciting life that he lived on the frontier of the scientific discovery of the origin of the chemical elements within stars. His adventures centered on academic institutions: California Institute of Technology, Rice University, University of Cambridge, Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg, and Clemson University. "Catch a Falling Star" tells how science and his love of it endowed his life with meaning.

Originally published in 1982, this collection of essays provides an integrated overview of the application of nuclear science to astronomy. The book discusses, among other topics, the abundances of the nuclear and chemical species on the Earth and the Moon, in meteorites, in the stars, and in interstellar space. The hypothesis that these species are produced by nuclear reactions is then explored and related to laboratory measurements. Other subjects include the dynamics of supernovae and interdisciplinary relationships between elementary particle physics and cosmology. The essays are dedicated to Professor William A. Fowler and pay tribute to his vast influence on the field.

"Catch a Falling Star," the life story of Donald Clayton, follows the struggle of one human being to find love and to create scientific understanding of the origin of the atoms of chemical elements. Born on an Iowa farm, son of an aviation pioneer, he became the first among his family to attend college, then graduate school in physics at Caltech. His three marriages reveal his battle with sexual anxiety and a sense of loss. At the same time he struggled to discover new knowledge about the creation of the atoms of our bodies and our earth. His close friendship with two great pioneers of the origin of matter enlivened his scientific life in the United States and Europe. His discoveries created two new fields of astronomy whose beginnings are featured in the book.

Clayton's autobiography chronicles the exciting life that he lived on the frontier of the scientific discovery of the origin of the chemical elements within stars. His adventures centered on academic institutions: California Institute of Technology, Rice University, University of Cambridge, Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg, and Clemson University. "Catch a Falling Star" tells how science and his love of it endowed his life with meaning.

Donald D. Clayton's Principles of Stellar Evolution and Nucleosynthesis remains the standard work on the subject, a popular textbook for students in astronomy and astrophysics and a rich sourcebook for researchers. The basic principles of physics as they apply to the origin and evolution of stars and physical processes of the stellar interior are thoroughly and systematically set out. Clayton's new preface, which includes commentary and selected references to the recent literature, reviews the most important research carried out since the book's original publication in 1968.