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Andrew Fraknoi (he/him/his)

Astronomy Professor
Fromm Institute, U of San Francisco
San Francisco, California, United States

Andrew Fraknoi retired in 2017 as the Chair of the Astronomy Department at Foothill College and now teaches introductory astronomy and physics at the Fromm Institute of the University of San Francisco and through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at San Francisco State University. In 2007, he was selected as Professor of the Year for the state of California by the Carnegie Endowment.

Fraknoi served for 14 years as the Executive Director of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. After retiring as Executive Director, he has worked as Senior Educator for the Society, developing educational materials and leading educational workshops.

A prolific writer, Fraknoi is the lead author of Astronomy, a nationally-adopted introductory college textbook, published free on-line by OpenStax with support from the Gates Foundation and others. (It is now the most widely used astronomy textbook in the U.S.) He is also the editor of two guides for teachers, The Universe at Your Fingertips and Solar Science. He has written two children’s book on astronomy, Disney’s Wonderful World of Space, and When the Sun Goes Dark. With Dr. Sidney Wolff, he was the founding editor of Astronomy Education Review. Recently, he has started writing short science-fiction stories extrapolating astronomical ideas; seven of his stories have been published so far. (See fraknoi.com to read his ficition.)

He received the Annenberg Foundation Prize of the American Astronomical Society (the highest honor in the field of astronomy education), as well as the Klumpke-Roberts Prize of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (given for a lifetime of contributions to popularizing astronomy.) He was the 2007 recipient of the Gemant Prize of the American Institute of Physics for his work in making connections between physics and culture.

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