Dr William M J Best

astronomer, teacher, programmer

My research focuses on brown dwarfs in the neighborhood of the Sun and in massive star-forming regions.
I study the demographics of these curious and faint objects to find clues about the complex physics underlying their formation and evolution.

I earned a M.Ed. in Educational Foundations in 2008 from the University of Hawaii at Manoa,
and a Ph.D. in Astronomy in 2018 from the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii.

I grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana, and Geneva, Switzerland. After getting my undergraduate degree in physics and astronomy at Haverford College, I decided to try high school teaching for one year. That quickly turned into fifteen wonderful years at Punahou School in Honolulu, Hawaii. I then sought a new challenge in the daily intelelctual stretch of astronomical research.

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Astronomer

My team studies brown dwarfs in the Solar neighborhood. We work on determining the mass and age distributions of brown dwarfs, and study their atmospheres using photometry and near-infrared spectroscopy.

I work with Prof. Adam Kraus at UT Austin to determine the mass distribution of brown dwarfs down to planetary masses in large star-forming complexes. We use data from the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes to determine the properties of these distant and faint objects.

I am the lead curator of the UltracoolSheet, a comprehensive, data-rich catalog of low-mass stars and brown dwarfs.

Learn more and find data...

Teacher

I taught high school math, physics, and guidance for 15 years at Punahou School in Honolulu, HI. I currently teach AST 301 (Introduction to Astronomy for non-science majors) at the University of Texas at Austin. I emphasize collaborative exploration and problem-solving, and I constantly experiment with tweaks and new methods to improve my students' learning and enjoyment of any subject I'm teaching.

Programmer

I have extensive experience coding in IDL and proficiency in python. I enjoy assembling large collections of scripts and functions into a coherent and automated framework.

Will Best