Deborah Byrd
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Deborah Byrd (born March 1, 1951 in San Antonio, Texas) is executive producer and cohost of the internationally syndicated Earth & Sky radio series. She has more than 30 years experience in science broadcasting,.
Earth & Sky, which consists of 90-second radio spots on science, is Byrd's second syndicated science radio series. She created the first-ever syndicated short-format science radio show, an astronomy series called Star Date in 1978 and went on to produce it for 15 years.[citation needed] With host Joel Block, Byrd left the astronomy series in the summer of 1991 and began producing and hosting Earth & Sky a month later.
A science journalist and writer for 30 years, Byrd has won many awards from the broadcasting and science communities, including having an asteroid named 3505 Byrd in her honor. Along with Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, Patrick Moore and Timothy Ferris, Byrd was an early winner of the Klumpke-Roberts Award of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. In 2003, Byrd's radio series Earth & Sky became the first radio show ever to win a Public Service Award from the U.S. National Science Board "for its achievement in broadcasting explanations of research and everyday science to a worldwide audience.
Byrd is also the founder of the annual Texas Star Party, which attracts hundreds of stargazers each year to a week-long astronomy festival, featuring speakers and nightly telescope viewing.
