Odewahn

Whenever Steve Odewahn needs to relieve a little stress, he heads for the woodpile and the power tools. His furniture building hobby began while he was doing post doctoral work at Caltech. Wanting a Mexican tiled-top table, but not wanting to pay a steep price for it, he decided to make his own. That project led to more and more, landing him in a cabinet making class while at Arizona State University. Steve also took up weightlifting extensively as a graduate student to work off tension.

Ducks and Cats

One Easter afternoon, Steve saw a duckling crossing the street all by itself. He scooped it up and took it home, even though it was too young to survive without its mother. The duck didn't last long, but Steve ended up visiting a woman who worked in duck rescue and ended up with two new ducks of his own, now named Diego and Frida. Steve also has two cats, Bob and Kitty, but they keep their distance from the birds. When the ducks were little, the cats might have bothered them, but now "the ducks are pretty tough."

Early astronomy work

Steve has been interested in astronomy since childhood. As a teenager, he began to be an amateur astronomer by grinding and polishing two of his own telescope mirrors. This inquisitive nature and interest in astronomy motivated him all the way from childhood experiments to obtaining a PhD under the direction of Gerard de Vaucouleurs at the University of Texas in the 1980s.

Stephen C Odewahn
Resident Astronomer, McDonald Observatory
Research Associate, McDonald Observatory
Ph.D., Astronomy, The University of Texas at Austin
M.A., Astronomy, The University of Texas at Austin
B.S., Physics, The University of Alabama