Dr. Stephen J. Curran

The ScienceAlert article Hydrogen not seen in early universe said

Something vital is missing in the far distant reaches of the Universe: hydrogen — the raw material for stars, planets, and possible life. The discovery of its apparent absence from distant galaxies by a team of Australian astronomers is puzzling because hydrogen gas is the most common constituent of normal matter in the Universe.
 
If anything, hydrogen was expected to be more abundant so early in the life of the Universe because it had not yet been consumed by the formation of all the stars and galaxies we know today.
 
Dr Steve Curran and colleagues at the University of New South Wales made their observations with the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope in India, which comprises thirty 45-metre-diameter dishes and is one of the world’s most sensitive radio telescopes. The results are to be published in a forthcoming issue of Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Stephen J. Curran, B.Sc. (Hons), M.Sc., Tekn.lic, Ph.D. is at the School of Physics, University of New South Wales.
 
Recently Steve has been working in the field of Observational Cosmology, where he is using radio and microwave absorption lines at high redshift to determine the existence of any temporal variation in the fundamental constants of nature. He is also continuing his work on the structure of the molecular gas and the relative starburst/AGN contribution in Seyfert galaxies.
 
Steve also has been involved in a survey of millisecond pulsars which led to some interesting results regarding the possibility of the detection of gravitational waves from a merger of a binary system consisting of two neutron stars, and how the mysterious gamma-ray burst phenomena may be connected with such mergers.
 
His undergraduate dissertation was “Factors Affecting the Leidenfrost Affect”. This was a study of the insulating vapor layer which spontaneously forms between bodies at very different temperatures. This is the effect which, for example, allows a drop of water to sit on a hot stove and the walking on hot coals with bare feet.
 
Steve coauthored Does the fine structure constant vary? A third quasar absorption sample consistent with varying α, Where is the 21-cm Absorption by Hydrogen in the Distant Universe?, Highest Redshift Detection of 21-cm Hydrogen in a Gravitational Lens, Spin Temperatures and Covering Factors for HI 21-cm Absorption in Damped Lyman-alpha Systems, A Giant Cloud of Pure Molecular Gas at 1.6 Billion Light-Years?, An Invisible Galaxy or Galaxies at 7.3 Billion Light-Years?, Searching for Invisible Galaxies in the Distant Universe, The evolution of the universe, A thousand million light years from home, The cosmological evolution of heavy element and molecular abundances, and Pulsar statistics III: Neutron star binaries.
 
Steve earned his Bachelor of Science degree (Honors) in Physics at Paisley College, Scotland in 1991. He earned his Master of Science degree (Radio Astronomy) at Jodrell Bank, University of Manchester, England in 1994. He earned his Doctor of Philosophy (Radio and Space Science) at the Chalmers University of Technology in conjunction with Onsala Space Observatory, Sweden in 2000.
 
Read Quasars Kick the Living Daylights Into Galaxies.