The Cornell University Department of Astronomy will present a public lecture next week by Columbia University astrophysicist Malvin A. Ruderman, this year's Thomas Gold Lecturer.

As part of the Thomas Gold Lecture Series, Ruderman, the Centennial Professor of Physics at Columbia, will speak on "Neutron Stars," Thursday, Oct. 8, at 4:30 p.m. in Schwartz Auditorium of Rockefeller Hall. The public is invited.

Ruderman also will deliver a joint astronomy and physics department colloquium on "Pulsar Evolution" in Schwartz Auditorium on Monday, Oct. 5, at 4:30 p.m.

Ruderman is a theoretical astrophysicist and a pioneer in the science of neutron stars and pulsars and also has contributed to the understanding of elementary particle physics. Born in New York, he received the A.B. from Columbia in 1945 and the Ph.D. from California Institute of Technology in 1951. He has taught at the University of California-Berkeley and NYU and has held appointments as visiting professor or lecturer at more than a dozen universities in the United States and abroad. He was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 1957, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences in 1974 and to the American Philosophical Society in 1996.

The Thomas Gold Lecture Series is sponsored by the astronomy department and the College of Arts and Sciences in honor of Thomas Gold, professor emeritus of astronomy. The series brings a noted astronomer to Cornell each year for public lectures and colloquia with faculty and students.