Sun Kwok, director, Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Taiwan

One book changed Sun Kwok's career. While an undergraduate at McMaster University in Canada, the Hong Kong-born engineering major picked up a copy of Fred Hoyle's Frontiers of Astronomy. Until then, he had associated astronomy with sophisticated star-gazing, but as he turned the pages he realized that modern physics had changed the discipline. By the time he put the book down, Kwok knew he wanted to change majors.

When he began his PhD at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Kwok was able to take advantage of the expanding physical tool kit Hoyle's book proposed. “In Minnesota we were fortunate because they had the first telescope with mid-infrared detectors,” he says. That helped Kwok in his early work on stellar winds from red giants (see CV).

But his curiosity expanded beyond these large, mature stars. So in 1976, the self-described “red-giant guy” attended an International Astronomical Union symposium on planetary nebulae. At the conference he learned that the conventional theories of sudden ejection of the nebulae had lots of problems. So his knowledge of red-giant winds led him to propose in 1978 that planetary nebulae form when stellar winds plough pre-existing planetary gas out of the way, piling it up like a snowbank.

As the physical tools of astronomy improved, Kwok's theoretical model was validated with infrared, ultraviolet and X-ray observations. More recently, technology helped attract Kwok to Taiwan. His relationship with the country extends back to 1991, when he helped Frank Shu to develop a ten-year plan to build up its astronomy.

Now at the helm of the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Kwok is in a position to establish Taiwan's role in two international astronomy projects. The Submillimeter Array – eight antennas on Mauna Kea in Hawaii that can image molecular emissions from star-forming regions – is already under way. And Kwok hopes to get Taiwan involved in an even more ambitious project – the Atacama Large Millimeter Array, an international project currently led by US, Japanese and European astronomers.

All of these developments mean more tools for the next generation of astronomers to use. “We now have all these capabilities to look at the Universe in a new light,” Kwok says. “It's still very much a young and developing field.”