Susan Lea, professor of Physics and Astronomy at San Francisco State University, has a B.A. and M.A. in mathematics from Cambridge University (with an emphasis in theoretical physics), and a Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of California, Berkeley. She is a Shapley lecturer for the American Astronomical Society, the author of PHYSICS: THE NATURE OF THINGS (ITP, 1997), and a flight instructor. Her research emphasis includes theoretical astrophysics, especially accretion problems and investigation of x-ray sources, and numerical hydrodynamics.