Second Edition. Editors:University Science Books, 2005

Gary Ferland is the co-author, with the late Donald Osterbrock of Lick Observatory, of the “Astrophysics of Gaseous Nebulae and Active Galactic Nuclei.”  This is the standard graduate text used to train future generations of astronomers in the study of the interstellar medium, the material between the stars.  The Earth formed from chemical elements that came from the interstellar medium.  When stars die, the elements they created by nuclear process are placed back into the interstellar medium.  Astrophysicists have made great progress in understanding how stars create new elements, place them into the interstellar medium when they die, and later, new stars and planets form from this material.
 
Much of the progress, and the update of this book, is the result of discoveries made with new generations of telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope and large ground-based telescopes around the earth.

Gary Ferland is a professor of physics in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Kentucky.  He earned his doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin and did postgraduate study at the University of Cambridge. His research focuses on the creation of the chemical elements in the young universe. He is author or co-author of more than 400 publications and has appeared on several lists of the most acknowledged astrophysicists in the world. He is included on the Institute of Science Information’s list of the most highly cited researchers of our time at www.isihighlycited.com.