What courses did you take in school to become an astronomer and what were your grades?

Since 1995, I have answered nearly 5000 questions, and one of the most often asked in the 'Careers' area is what kinds of courses I took to prepare for this career in astronomy, and what grades I got. I have resisted answering this question because I would rather that you work with your school councelors and college advisors in setting up your own program of study. But I have decided there is an educational value in 'coming out of the closet' with my own experiences so that there is a better appreciation of how rigorous an astronomer's formal education has to be in order to elect this as a career option.

I attended Hamilton Junior High School in Oakland, California between 1995-1968 and took the usual courses which included:

But by the time I had finished 9th grade, in my after-school hours I had built from scratch two radios, a transistorized telescope 'clock drive', a 4 1/2-inch reflecting telescope, read every book in both the local public library and the City of Oakland main library on astronomy, took up 'astrophotography' and taught myself how to develop black and white film and make prints, and created a simple photo atlas of the constellations. I still have my original notebook from 7th grade where I have sketched the 'H-R diagram' and populated it with the familiar stars and simple sketches of the evolution of stars. That I knew about 'stellar evolution' at this kind of technical level in 7th grade still amazes me today!!

I attended Fremont High School in Oakland California between 1968-1971 where I took:

By the end of high school, I had built a second 8-inch reflector and was seriously into astrophotography, began visiting the UC Berkeley undergraduate library and local textbook stores to familiarize myself with the details of cosmology and stellar evolution from a more mathematical perspective 'pre-calculus'. I formed the schools only 'Astronomy Club' which was my thinly-disguised attempt at teaching astronomy to my peers who were from the Honor Society.

Then I went to UC Berkeley from 1971 to 1975 where I took a LOT of hard courses in math and physics...but I was elated to finally get into some exciting subjects!

I should note that in my Junior year, I taught myself tensor analysis and tensor calculus and by the end of my junior year I had 're-discovered' general relativity and the simple solutions for black holes and big bang cosmology. This was mostly a 'filling in the steps' activity using a general relativity text book as a guide, but the point is that I did all of the hard mathematics that led to the standard predictions and tests for general relativity, which was quite exciting and the most memorable event of my junior year at UCB!

During my Senior year, I was invited to take a graduate level course in cosmology given by Prof. Joseph Silk, and my term paper was on the 'singularity conditions' developed by Hawkins and Penrose which proved the existence of a 'past singularity' in the evolution of the universe from general relativistic considerations. I recall being the only student, and undergraduate at that, who knew tensor analysis.

Graduate school at Harvard University lasted from 1975 to 1982 when I got my PhD in astronomy. In the first two years there were required, advanced courses in physics and astronomy, and these were a major challenge for me in addition to living in another state. Here is what I took...more or less:

At least for me, my graduate school experience was one of the least pleasant times of my life. Many people complain about the poor quality of the experience, especially the teaching ability of the professors, and the constant use of published research papers as the 'course textbooks'. But at Harvard, there were only three students admitted into the program including myself in 1975, and in general, in such a small fish bowl, you are competing with some of the most brilliant seniors graduated by the american college system, so you have to expect that in your new 'league' you will have a very hard time feeling 'competent' and on top of things. The pace of learning in graduate school is very fast...and by the end of the second year you are expected to have selected your PhD thesis research topic area. I distinctly recall attending student colloquia where some of the students 2-3 years ahead of me were presenting their research...and in one distinct case, a presentation by Edgar Knobloch on 'stochastic differential equations' was completely incomprehensible to me. He was only 26 years old and was a theoretician. This is how quickly a person 'evolves' from a senior in high school to a 'monster mind' in theoretical astrophysics. It is also these kinds of people you will be competing with to get a job after your PhD!!!