Hello. My name is Charles Dermer.
I was born in 1954 and grew up in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, 
a town in the western part of the state. Beginning in 1972, I studied physics and philosophy at the Claremont Colleges, located 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 in 1980. I changed fields and studied theoretical astrophysics under Professor Robert J. Gould at the University of California, San Diego, and was awarded a PhD degree from UCSD in 1984. I did postdoctoral work at NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center 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 from 1991-1992 before joining the Space Science Division of the US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC.
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. Since leaving federal service, I have:
- Revised my study, now called Natural Philosophy of Death (2/2026), which includes the concept of replacement time (or year).
- Draft manuscript Physics and Metaphysics of Death (10/2025); sent to 9 academics for comments.
- Attended public events associated with the Trump Inauguration and wrote about it on my Substack page. (1/2025)
- Completed the document Physical Demography, the physics of populations and human mortality. a first draft of (and quite different from) Physics and Metaphysics of Death. No longer available. (10/2024)
- Wrote a short story (May 5, 2023) for our digital age here.
- Read the Bible. (May 2020-March 2022)
- Completed one album of music, Crole River (2017) and have two other albums, Xela and Orchids in Sunlight, in production. See Music. (ongoing)
- International travel: Mexico road trip (2016), Russia (2017), Morocco (2018), Mexico/Guatemala road trip (2020), Mexico/El Salvador road trip (2024), UK (2025). See Art.
Since May, 2023, I’ve been looking at some problems in statistical physics, mortality studies and demographic science. This research (May 25, 2023-October 12, 2024) culminated in Physical Demography (2024) and, with another year of work, Physics and Metaphysics of Death (2025). It will be published as Natural Philosophy of Death (2026).