Undergraduates
Why does the space shuttle returning to Earth cause two separate sonic booms?
Professor Charles Gammie received his bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1987 from Yale University and his Ph.D. in astrophysical sciences from Princeton in 1992. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Virginia from 1992-1994, and at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts from 1994-1998. He joined the faculties of physics and astronomy at Illinois in January 1999.
Professor Gammie's research involves magnetohydrodynamics, star formation, and accretion physics. He is a leader in the computer simulation of astrophysical plasmas, the formation of interstellar clouds, and the collapse of dense clouds to form stars. He is also carrying out calculations of disk accretion onto black holes in general relativity. He was named an NCSA Faculty Fellow in 2001 and a John Bardeen Faculty Scholar by the College of Engineering in 2005.