Professor Paul Crowther is Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Sheffield and is currently Vice President of the Royal Astronomical Society.  Paul’s research involves the study of the birth, life and death of the most massive stars in the universe. Such stars are rare, but dominate the ionising budget of galaxies and the energetics of young stellar populations. Paul’s primary scientific goals involve the study of late evolutionary phases of massive stars, notably Wolf-Rayet stars. This is achieved via ultraviolet to infrared observations with large ground and space based telescopes (e.g. VLT, HST), plus sophisticated analysis tools.

Paul’s presentation will provide an overview of Wolf–Rayet (WR) stars. This class of objects was first identified in 1867 from the Paris Observatory and exhibit incredible emission line spectra, which permit their identification throughout the Milky Way and in external galaxies.They are now known to represent the final, hydrogen-poor stage in the evolution of the most massive stars,  Paul will present a variety of phenomena exhibited by these very special stars.