Shawn earned his Ph.D. in nuclear physics at
the University of California at Los Angeles
in 1989, and then accepted a joint research
appointment at the University of California
at Berkeley's Center for Particle Astrophysics
and the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory's Division
of Space Sciences. There he ran the Leuschner
Observatory, was chief observer for the Berkeley
Automated Supernova Search, and headed up the
search for Nemesis-- the postulated companion
star to our sun that may have induced the asteroid
shower that killed the dinosaurs.
In 1994 Shawn left academia to
found the Society for Amateur Scientists (SAS),
a non-profit educational and research organization
dedicated to helping everyday people get personally
involved in scientific discovery. Today he still
serves as the society's Executive Director.
In 1995, Scientific American
magazine selected Shawn to take over their long-running
and widely-read feature called "The Amateur
Scientist." His monthly columns were read
by over one million people and provided amateur
scientists of all ages with enough detailed how-to
secrets of research to allow ambitious amateurs
to make original discoveries. The column ended
its seventy three year run in the magazine in
March, 2001.
In 1999 Shawn Carlson was honored
for his achievements with the prestigious MacArthur
Foundation "genius" Fellowship. His
work continues to attract attention. In 2001 he
was profiled in Dan Rather's book The American
Dream (Harper Collins Pubs., May), in the New
York Times Tuesday Science Section (January 21)
in Parade Magazine (May 6), and in Scientific
Conservations (Time Books, October). |
