Linda Sparke

Emeritus Professor of Astronomy, University of Wisconsin-Madison

sparke_at_astro_dot_wisc_dot_edu

This website is still under construction
(March 2026)

Astronomy Interests

Structure and dynamics of galaxies, including observation and modeling of warped disks and polar rings; dynamical models for bars; studies of circumstellar and circumbinary disks in eccentric stellar binaries. High-energy astrophysics, transient sources. Archiving and curation of astronomical data.

Professional Biography

Dr. Sparke retired from UW-Madison on 7 May 2010, moving to the Astrophysics division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. She retired from NASA in January 2026.

Dr. Sparke held positions at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge (UK), and the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute in Groningen (Netherlands). She then moved to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she worked for two decades as a professor of Astronomy. She also spent two years as a Program Officer in Astronomical Sciences at the National Science Foundation. Dr Sparke is a Fellow of the American Astronomical Society and of the American Physical Society.

With Prof. Jay Gallagher, also of UW-Madison, Dr Sparke wrote the advanced undergraduate textbook
“Galaxies in the Universe: An Introduction”.
This upper-level undergraduate textbook was first published in October 2000 by Cambridge University Press. The Second Edition was published in February 2007; it won the American Astronomical Society’s 2008 Chambliss Award for Astronomical Writing. It is a `with-calculus' introduction, aimed primarily at third- and fourth-year undergraduate students of astronomy or physics, who have taken the first year or two of university-level physics. Graduate students and research workers in related areas may also find it useful as an introduction to the field.

Click here for links to the publisher's website, for the Table of Contents and Errata for both editions, and diagrams for the Second Edition in a form suitable for powerpoint presentations.

March 2026