Dr. Bruno Stanek

Dr. Bruno Stanek studied Mathematics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Ph.D. 1971. Instructor at ETH (Institute for Applied Mathematics, Celestial Mechanics). Between 1966 and 1972, with interruptions, scientific programmer for the Chemical Industry at Basel and for Swissair. Ever since Bruno Stanek mostly was a freelance mathematician, software and book author and later his own publisher, only interrupted between 1976 and 1979 while teaching mathematics, physics and informatics at the engineering college Brugg (Switzerland). Between 1980 and about 1996 he invested a great effort to create his „Medical Software Dr. Stanek“. Hundreds of Thousands of lines of program code built a comprehensive medical administration program for small and medium practices and the emergency planning in several Swiss regions. After 1995 he found back to his main occupation and programmed his space encyclopedias interactively from scratch. This brought the vast content of his former book encyclopedias into a form never dreamed before, volume „Space Encyclopedia“ and volume „Planet encyclopedia“. A vastly expanded text, an enormous video archive as well as more than 200 astrodynamical animations and simulations, all designed and programmed by himself, appeared in four completely sold CD editions and two DVD editions each between 1995 and 2006 under the Label „Astrosoftware Dr. B.L. Stanek“. The Swiss and neighboring German and Austrian public, however, got to know Bruno Stanek by his commentaries for Swiss National TV for all live broadcasts about space from Apollo 7 in 1968 up to the Shuttle missions. In 1975/76 he had his own 16-part TV series „News from Space“ – at prime time 7-7:30 p.m. – an oddity all over Europe! There was no year until 2006 without minor or major TV programs on some channel. For nostalgic reasons he occasionally shows a 20 minute video containing highlights from 38 TV years. This only documents about 1/1000 of his TV contributions! He visited the USA almost 50 times since 1965 and met close to 90 astronauts and cosmonauts, many as guests on TV or conferences. He witnessed moon mission Apollo 16 and 17 from the Kennedy Space Center as live moderator for Swiss National TV. On private trips he seldom missed a rocket launch at the Cape and none of Swiss astronaut Claude Nicollier’s flights from launch to landing – a lucky instance that maybe no Swiss citizen short of the astronaut himself shares with him. Stanek visited most NASA field centers, privately or as a reporter and published more than a dozen books and countless newspaper articles about spaceflight, astronomy, Space Art and the personal use of computers – the latter mainly during the pioneering days. His latest „humorous non fiction book“ became another bestseller. Bruno Stanek’s lecturing trail in Switzerland and neighboring countries is legendary. With his German language homepage www.Stanek.ch he keeps many friends informed about his activities. There one also can find short videos about current events – and his personal opinions. In addition, he has passed the 40 year mark working for Swiss National TV when doing around 40 interviews in all kinds of media for "40 years Apollo 11" last July. Since June 2009 I started showing my cinema versions of videofilms about Space & Astronomy. It all was inspired by "something", when I had to be ready with an alternative program during rainy stargazers nights... I am glad I had the courage to enter movie making after having acquired the needed experience over four decades: it surpassed all my expectations at an age, when I just had passed my retirement age...