| Robert Kraft | |
| Birth Date: | 16 June 1927 |
| Birth Place: | Seattle, Washington, U.S. |
| Death Place: | Santa Cruz, California |
| Nationality: | American |
| Alma Mater: | University of Washington, University of California at Berkeley |
| Doctoral Advisor: | George Herbig |
| Known For: | Kraft break |
Robert Paul Kraft (June 16, 1927 – May 26, 2015) was an American astronomer.[1] He performed pioneering work on Cepheid variables, stellar rotation, novae, and the chemical evolution of the Milky Way. His name is also associated with the Kraft break: the abrupt change in the average rotation rate of main sequence stars around spectral type F8.
Kraft served as director of the Lick Observatory (1981 - 1991), president of the American Astronomical Society (1974 - 1976), and president of the International Astronomical Union (1997 - 2000).[2]
He received his B.S. at the University of Washington in 1947, M.S. in mathematics at the University of Washington in 1949, and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.[3] He died in 2015.[4]