Wendy Hagen Bauer is a Professor of Astronomy at Wellesley College. She joined the faculty in 1979, having spent two years as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

She graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1971 with a B.A. degree in astronomy-physics, and received her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in astronomy from the University of Hawaii in 1974 and 1977, respectively.

Since her graduate school days, her research has centered on the process of mass loss from stars in the late stages of their lives. She is currently investigating the binary star system VV Cephei, in which a mass-losing supergiant star is orbited by a smaller, hotter companion. Every 20 years, the hot star goes into eclipse behind the supergiant, which allows us to study the structure of the different layers of the extended supergiant atmosphere. Dr. Bauer began work on this object while a postdoctoral fellow in 1978, using data from NASA's International Ultraviolet Explorer satellite. She is now working with data on the 1997-99 eclipse obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope, and her research is supported by a grant from NASA's Space Telescope Science Institute.

Dr. Bauer is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi, and a Harlow Shapley Visiting Lecturer for the American Astronomical Society. She is also a member of the International Astronomical Union, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and the Council on Undergraduate Research.

She is married to Thomas Bauer, Instructor of Laboratory Science in Physics at Wellesley College, and they have a daughter, Angie, born in 1989. She is an avid figure skater, which she continues to enjoy even as her daughter passes her by in jumping ability.

Profile last updated: 6/00