David Louis Band or David L. Band was an astronomer, a leading scientist in theory of the gamma-ray bursts.
Background
David Band was born January 9, 1957, in Boston, Massachusetts to a Jewish family. His father was Arnold Band, professor of Jewish and Hebrew literature at University of California, Los Angeles, and his mother was Ora Band, Hebrew teacher.
Education
After graduating from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Physics (1979), David continued as a graduate student in Physics at Harvard. He got his Master of Arts in 1980 and his Doctor of Philosophy Physics at Harvard in 1985 in the title of "Non‑thermal Radiation Mechanisms and Processes in SS433 and Active Galactic Nuclei" (supervised by Professor Jonathan Grindlay).
Career
After he received his Doctor of Philosophy Doctor Band held postdoctoral positions at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, the University of California at Berkeley and the Center for Astronomy and Space Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. He worked on the BATSE experiment that was part of the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (CGRO), launched in 1991. He also proposed the functional form (known as the Band-function) for the description of the prompt spectra of the gamma-ray bursts.
After the CGRO mission ended, Doctor Band moved to the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) where he worked mainly on classified research and continued to work on GRB energetics and spectra.
When National Aeronautics and Space Administration planned two new follow‑up missions to CGRO, the Swift and GLAST observatories, David Band seized an opportunity in 2001 to join the staff the Fermi Science Support Center at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC).