Christopher Fulton McKee (born 1942) is an astrophysicist. 1942 was a common year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). ... An astrophysicist is a person whose profession is astrophysics. ...

McKee obtained a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) in 1970 under the advisor George Field. In 1974, he was appointed Professor of Physics and Astronomy, University of California at Berkeley. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and chairmain of the UCB Physics Department. He is a former member (1990) and chairman (2000) of the NASA Astronomy and Astrophysics Survey Committee (the "decade review") and former Director of the Space Sciences Laboratory (SSL) at UCB. University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (also known as Cal, UC Berkeley, UCB, or simply Berkeley) is a public coeducational university situated in the foothills of Berkeley, California, USA to the east of San Francisco Bay, overlooking the Golden Gate. ... The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) (established 1958) is the government agency responsible for the United States of Americas space program and long-term general aerospace research. ...

McKee performed the first simulations of relativistic counter-streaming plasmas as part of his Ph.D. thesis at Berkeley (1970). He began his study of the interstellar medium by pointing out the existence of reverse shocks in young supernova remnants, and he then analyzed the interaction of a supernova blast wave with interstellar clouds. Since joining the Physics and Astronomy Departments in Berkeley in 1974, he has devoted much of his research to studying processes in the interstellar medium, including evaporation of clouds, the structure of shock waves in atomic and molecular gas, and the dynamics of blast waves in both homogeneous and inhomogeous media. In collaboration with Jeremiah Ostriker (Princeton University), he developed the three-phase model of the interstellar medium, which has been widely used to organize and interpret observational data. Remnant of Keplers Supernova, SN 1604. ... The interstellar medium (or ISM) is a term used in astronomy to describe the matter and energy content that exists between the stars (or their immediate circumstellar environment) within a galaxy. ... For the vector animation platform, see Macromedia Shockwave. ... Jeremiah P. Ostriker is a distinguished astrophysicist at Princeton University. ...

His research on quasars has included development of the relativistic blast wave model for variability, introduction of reverberation mapping to analyze variable emission line profiles, the two-phase model for quasar emission line regions, and the development of the theory of coronae and winds from accretion disks. This view, taken with infrared light, is a false-color image of a quasar-starburst tandem with the most luminous starburst ever seen in such a combination. ... An accretion disc (or accretion disk) is a structure formed by material falling into a gravitational source. ...

He has developed a self-regulated model for the structure and evolution of molecular clouds, and for the rate of star formation within these clouds. A Molecular cloud is a type of interstellar clouds whose density and size permits the formation of molecular hydrogen, H2. ... Star formation is the process by which gas in molecular clouds gets transformed into stars. ...

He established the Berkeley Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics Group with Richard Klein to develop the technique of adaptive mesh refinement for numerical simulations of astrophysical fluid dynamics.

In his three decades as a professor at UCB, he has advised many graduate students and postdoctoral research fellows.