RAPID: Courseware Development for Computational Astrophysics

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AST-0947765BalsaraThe last few years have seen computational astrophysics move from being a fringe activity in astrophysics to being a mainstream activity. It is still quite a young field that is catching on fast, especially among the younger astronomers who are more computer-aware. It would be very advantageous to make computational astrophysics a mainstream topic in the training of young astronomers. However, the absence of a standard text in computational astrophysics is a major impediment in achieving that goal. Dr. Balsara is part-way through writing such a text book, loosely patterned after the very successful text 'Numerical Recipes', but progress has been quite slow. This award relieves Dr. Balsara from other duties and permits a concentrated push to take the book to completion. It also supports a graduate student who is producing high-quality solutions to the problems in the text, and some travel for presentation, consultation, and collaboration.The book to be produced teaches the background material with a lot of intuitive arguments and ample pieces of example code. Its first half is essentially a one-semester course, while the second half is more of a research monograph. The resultant text will be of great value to practicing scientists in, or thinking of joining, the field of computational astrophysics, as well as of use in high level courses. It is, therefore, hoped that the text will draw more people into the field, as well as catalyze new research in this field.This award is made under the "Grants for Rapid Response Research (RAPID)" program.