Gamma-ray Bursts

Dr Chryssa Kouveliotou joined the Gamma Ray Astrophysics Team at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in 1991. She has received the Rossi Prize of the American Astronomical Society and the Descartes Prize of the European Union for her work on magnetars and gamma ray bursts. Professor Ralph Wijers is the Director of the Astronomical Institute - Anton Pannekoek, and holds the Chair of High-Energy Astrophysics at the University of Amsterdam. He has worked on gamma ray bursts at Princeton University Observatory and Cambridge. Professor Stan Woosley is the author of over 300 publications on the subjects of stellar evolution, supernovae and gamma ray bursts. He has received the Rossi Prize of the American Astronomical Society and the Bethe Prize of the American Physical Society for his work.

• Prologue C. Kouveliotou, R. A . M. J. Wijers and S. E. Woosley; 1. The discovery of the gamma-ray burst phenomenon R. W. Klebesadel; 2. Instrumental principles E. E. Fenimore; 3. The BATSE era G. J. Fishman and C. A. Meegan; 4. The cosmological era L. Piro and K. Hurley; 5. The Swift era N. Gehrels and D. N. Burrows; 6. Discoveries enabled by multi-wavelength afterglow observations of gamma-ray bursts J. Greiner; 7. Prompt emission from gamma-ray bursts T. Piran, R. Sari and R. Mochkovitch; 8. Basic gamma-ray burst afterglows P. Mészáros and R. A. M. J. Wijers; 9. The GRB-supernova connection J. Hjorth and J. S. Bloom; 10. Models for gamma-ray burst progenitors and central engines S. E. Woosley; 11. Jets and gamma-ray burst unification schemes J. Granot and E. Ramirez-Ruiz; 12. High-energy cosmic rays and neutrinos E. Waxman; 13. Long gamma-ray burst host galaxies and their environments J. P. U. Fynbo, D. Malesani and P. Jakobsson; 14. Gamma-ray burst cosmology V. Bromm and A. Loeb; 15. Epilogue R. D. Blandford; Index.

'… the editors and authors are to be congratulated at managing to squeeze so much into a modest-sized volume. … I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in how the most luminous objects in the Universe work.' The Observatory