Jonathan Braithwaite obtained his PhD at the Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik in Munich in cooperation with the Universiteit van Amsterdam. The stars are theoretically the same everywhere so he was able to follow this up with a stint at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics in Toronto before moving back to Germany to work at the university in Bonn, where he taught the course on hydrodynamics that led to this book.