Biography
Professor Sullivan’s interests are in astrobiology, in particular the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), as well as the history of astronomy. Recent SETI activity has included a collaboration with the Serendip group, using the Arecibo 1000-foot dish for an all-sky search for a wide variety of signal modulation at 21 cm (seti@home project). History of astronomy research has been on the twentieth century, in particular the development of early radio astronomy (Cosmic Noise: A History of Early Radio Astronomy,2009) and ideas about extraterrestrial life, as well as a long-term project designed to produce a biography of William Herschel. Together with John Baross (Biological Oceanography) he has produced the graduate textbook Planets and Life: The Emerging Science of Astrobiology (2007).