Sir Harold Kroto and David Eicher join Starmus Festival Board

Garik Israelian, director of the Starmus Festival, the international celebration of astronomy, allied sciences, music, and the arts, today announces two additions to the Starmus Festival Board of Directors.

Both Sir Harold Kroto and David Eicher were speakers at the 2014 Starmus Festival in Tenerife, Canary Islands, and have continued to be active with the organization.

Kroto is the Nobel Prize winning, British-born Frances Eppes Professor of Chemistry at Florida State University. He is widely renowned for his research on nanoscience and carbon chemistry, having received the Nobel Prize for the discovery of Buckminsterfullerine (C60) while simulating the atmospheres of red giant stars. He is a leading researcher in nanoscience technology. He is also an accomplished artist and graphic designer.

Eicher is Editor-in-Chief of Astronomy magazine, the world’s largest publication on the subject, and author of 21 books on history and science. An avid astronomical observer, he has logged hundreds of hours behind the eyepiece and is an enthusiastic supporter of astronomy outreach, serving as President of the Astronomy Foundation since 2011. He is coeditor of the book Starmus: 50 Years of Man in Space (2014), along with Israelian and May, and serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Asteroid Day project.

The Board also includes theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, musician and activist Peter Gabriel, cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, Israelian, musician and astrophysicist Brian May, Nobel Prize winning biologist Jack Szostak, astrophysicist Jill Tarter, ethnologist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, and astrophysicist Robert Williams.