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David John Eicher (born August 7, 1961) is an American editor, writer, and popularizer of astronomy and space. He has been editor-in-chief of ''Astronomy'' magazine since 2002. He is author, coauthor, or editor of 18 books on science and American history and is known for having founded a magazine on astronomical observing, ''Deep Sky Monthly'', when he was a 15-year-old high school student.〔May, Hal, ed.: ''Contemporary Authors,'' vol. 113, page 141, Gale Research Co., Detroit, Michigan, 1985;〕 Eicher is also a historian, having researched and written extensively about the American Civil War. ==Early life== Eicher was born in Oxford, Ohio on August 7, 1961. He was born into a scientific family, the son of John Harold Eicher (born 1921), a professor of organic chemistry at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, who as a young man was a Manhattan Project scientist, and housewife Susan Ann (née Arne) Eicher (1923–1983). His sister Nancy Eicher (born 1959) is a journalist and editor. His great uncle was Ethan Nathan Allen (1904–1993), a professional baseball player and baseball coach at Yale University whose players included George H. W. Bush. His great-great grandfather Darius Wetzel (1839–1903) fought with the 74th Ohio Infantry in the Civil War, which influenced Eicher more than a century later. He is of predominantly German ancestry, with significant Swiss, English, and a very small amount of Delaware Native American ancestry in his bloodline. Eicher grew up in a suburb of the small town of Oxford, with relatively dark skies overhead. He attended William Holmes McGuffey Laboratory School (a school for offspring of Miami University employees) and Talawanda High School, where he was involved in band activities. He was also actively interested in American history and in science, leaning toward a career as a doctor. This changed in early 1976 when he attended a “star party” in Oxford and Eicher looked at Saturn through a telescope. He was immediately attracted to astronomy and set off exploring the sky with binoculars, joining the local astronomy club, and beginning to write for their publication when another contributor quit. Eicher had significant enthusiasm for writing about star clusters, nebulae, and galaxies — objects in deep space beyond the solar system — and by June 1977 commenced publishing ''Deep Sky Monthly'', a journal for similar observers. ''Deep Sky Monthly'' caught on and soon had a circulation of several hundred copies among astronomy enthusiasts. By the time Eicher started attending Miami University in Oxford, focusing on physics, he continued producing the magazine, which had gone to a commercial printer with slick paper and offset photo printing, reaching a circulation of 1,000.〔May, Hal, ed.: ''Contemporary Authors,'' vol. 113, page 141, Gale Research Co., Detroit, Michigan, 1985;〕 In the fall of 1982 Eicher left his schooling after three years of college when Richard Berry, then editor of ''Astronomy'', offered him a position as assistant editor and a continuance of Eicher’s magazine, now retitled ''Deep Sky'' and to be published quarterly. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「David J. Eicher」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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