Vanderbilt University researcher Bob O’Dell’s dream of becoming an astronomer took him from his Depression-era childhood in an East St. Louis row house to becoming NASA’s chief scientist on the Hubble Space Telescope program. Now a world authority on the Orion Nebula, O’Dell continues his research using the HST to study stellar birth and death as well as planetary development around very young stars in Orion and other nebulae.

By Dwayne O'Brien
July 9, 2003