STEEL, Duncan (I.) 1955-

PERSONAL: Born 1955, in Midsomer Norton, England. Immigrated to Australia. Education: Queen Elizabeth College, London, BSc., 1977; Imperial College, London, MSc., DIC, 1979; University of Canterbury (New Zealand), Ph.D., 1984.

ADDRESSES: Agent—Curtis Brown Group, 28-29 Haymarket, London SW1Y 4SP, England. E-mail—d.i. [email protected]

CAREER: Teacher and researcher. The Spaceguard Foundation, vice-president.

MEMBER: Royal Astronomical Society (fellow); International Astronomical Union.

WRITINGS:

Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday Comets: The Search for the Million-Megaton Menace That Threatens Life on Earth, John Wiley (New York, NY), 1995.

Marking Time: The Epic Quest to Invent the Perfect Calendar, John Wiley (New York, NY), 2000.

Target Earth, Reader's Digest (Pleasantville, NY), 2000.

Eclipse: The Celestial Phenomenon That Changed theCourse of History, Joseph Henry Press (Washington, DC), 2001.

Contributor to periodicals, including Sky and Space, Astronomy Now, and Guardian.

SIDELIGHTS: Considered the leading Near-Earth-Objects (NEO) researcher in the southern hemisphere, research astronomer Duncan Steel is the director of Spaceguard Australia, is affiliated with the Anglo-Australian Observatory, and is a research fellow at the University of Adelaide, Australia. He has also served on the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration's detection and intercept committees, which were created to assess asteroid threats and to develop technologies to avert damaging collisions. Steel provoked critical controversy with his first book, Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday Comets: The Search for the Million-Megaton Menace That Threatens Life on Earth. Steel theorizes that a devastating asteroid could be expected to collide with Earth about once every one hundred thousand years and recommends the creation of an international search program to find and intercept potentially dangerous asteroids and comets. He also speculates that asteroids were responsible for the mass extinction of dinosaurs and other species.

Lucy McFadden, writing in Sky and Telescope, also judged Rogue Asteroids to be both important and flawed. She appreciated the book's value in bringing attention to the subject of asteroid danger, but observed that its statistics were questionable and its logic difficult to follow. Though McFadden commented that Steel's "highly unusual" hypothesis should be taken "as fiction, not even science fiction," she concluded that its message "is important and could well be the most significant scientific result coming from the space programs of all the world's governments in the latter years of this millennium." Offering a more laudatory view, Astronomy reviewer John Shibley found Rogue Asteroids "intriguing" and informative, considering its "quirkiness" a significant merit. He deemed the book highly readable, as did a reviewer for Publishers Weekly, who hailed it as a "gripping report."

Marking Time: The Epic Quest to Invent the Perfect Calendar received less attention than Steel's earlier book. A Publishers Weekly reviewer considered it an excellent study of calendar systems through history but observed that the book suffers from a surfeit of unrelated facts. Booklist reviewer Bryce Christensen, however, admired Steel's ability to untangle the cultural intrigues behind the development of the calendar. "No book," Christensen concluded, "could serve as a better guide to the cumulative invention that defines the imaginary threshold to the new millennium."

In Eclipse: The Celestial Phenomenon That Changed the Course of History Steel examines the scientific discoveries and superstitions related to eclipses throughout history. Included in these scientific discoveries is the 1919 eclipse that helped Einstein develop his theory of relativity. Christopher Columbus used his knowledge of an impending eclipse to convince Jamaican chieftains to supply his ships with food, or be punished by the gods. Booklist's Gilbert Taylor wrote, "Generously illustrated, Steel's informative discourse also promises staying power by ending with a guide to the next two decades of solar eclipses." Library Journal's Jeffrey Beall recommended Eclipse "for all astronomy collections."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Astronomy, September, 1995, p. 96.

Booklist, May 15, 1995, p. 1619; October 15, 1999, p. 402; October 15, 2001, Gilbert Taylor, review of Eclipse: The Celestial Phenomenon That Changed the Course of History, p. 364.

Choice, April, 2000, V. V. Raman, review of MarkingTime: The Epic Quest to Invent the Perfect Calendar, p. 1490; April, 2002, M. K. Hemenway, review of Eclipse, p. 1444.

Library Journal, November 1, 2001, Jeffrey Beall, review of Eclipse, p. 130.

Nation, October 28, 1996, p. 38.

Nature, November 2, 1995, p. 106.

New Scientist, August 19, 1995, p. 48.

Physics Today, February 1997, p. 65.

Publishers Weekly, April 17, 1995, p. 47; October 25, 1999, p. 62.

Science News, June 1, 2002, review of Eclipse, p. 351.

Sky & Telescope, January 1996, p. 54; March, 2000, review of Marking Time, p. 84.

Washington Post Book World, July 30, 1995, p. 13.