Hello. My name is Charles Dermer.
I grew up in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, a town in the panhandle about 40 miles from the Wyoming border.
I studied physics and philosophy at the Claremont Colleges, about 30 miles east of LA. I received a physics BS from Harvey Mudd College in 1977 and an experimental physics MA from Dartmouth College, NH, in 1979. I transferred to the University of California, San Diego, at La Jolla, and there I changed fields and studied theoretical astrophysics under Professor Robert J. Gould.
I was awarded a PhD degree from UCSD in 1984. Then I did postdoctoral work at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, from 1984-1986, and at Lawrence Livermore National Lab and UC Berkeley Space Sciences Lab from 1987-1991. I was research scientist at Rice University in Houston, Texas from 1991-1992 before joining the Space Science Division of the US Naval Research Laboratory.
From 1992 until I retired, in 2015, I was head of the High Energy Astrophysics Theory Section in the High Energy Space Environment Branch at NRL. My research specialty was high-energy radiations from black holes, neutron stars, and supernovae. See Science.
Recently (2022-2024), I’ve been looking at some problems in statistics, mortality studies, and demographic science. This is my first set of papers from these investigations:
Theory of Population Profiles and the Ukrainian Death Spiral (January 30, 2024) pdf
Don’t Count on Both Presidents Trump and Biden Dying by Natural Causes in the Next 5 Years, Though One Probably Will (January 30, 2024) pdf
Spike in Hungarian Mortality Rates from Chernobyl? (October 6, 2023) pdf
Telomeres and the Statistical Mechanics of Mortality (August 23, 2023) pdf
I wrote a short story (May 5, 2023) for our digital age here.
Thought I’d read a good book, so I chose the Bible. (May 2020-March 2022)
I have completed one album of music, Crole River and have two other albums, Xela and Orchids in Sunlight, in production. I also learned some music theory. See Music. (2016-present)