Johannes van Paradijs dies

Johannes van Paradijs, one of the world's leading experts on gamma-ray bursts, has died at the age of 53 after an extended battle with cancer. van Paradijs, who held appointments at the University of Amsterdam and the University of Alabama at Huntsville, led the team which found the first optical counterpart of a gamma-ray burst in 1997. He published more than 300 papers on a variety of topics in astrophysics and was awarded the Bruno Rossi Prize of the American Astronomical Society last year. Van Paradijs is survived by his wife, the astrophysicist Chryssa Kouveliotou.