Helen Chappell

Helen Chappell

Durham

Helen Chappell was born on September 5, 1985 in Atlanta, Georgia. She was the first child of Cynthia and Raymond Chappell.

The years of her youth were marked by diverse activities that she pursued with passion. Helen loved to dance, and did ballet for years. She was always an avid bike rider, played softball, and simply loved being outside, camping, and hiking trails. Foreshadowing her future, Helen developed a keen interest in science and astronomy early and would often try and teach others about what she had learned. Helen started into music and learned how to play trombone and joined the school band, doing both marching and jazz band.

Helen attended Northwood High School in Pittsboro for her first two years then competed successfully for admission to the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics in Durham, from which she graduated in 2003. She then attended The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and graduated cum laude with a B.S. in physics and astronomy in 2007. While there, and through 2008, she was a science educator and planetarium technician and presenter at The Morehead Planetarium, and studied abroad in Chile. Helen then conducted graduate research as a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow at the National Renewal Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, while earning her M.S. in physics from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

After much adventuring, the self-described recovering physicist and unashamed nerd returned home and married her long-time love Eric Bowen on the campus of NCSSM, where they had met some 10 years earlier. Helen told Scientific American that she was, "too much of a generalist at heart to be happy doing physics research," and started to explore her love of writing and science at the News and Observer as a 2011 Mass Media Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. After a short stint at the North Carolina Solar Center, she became an exhibit developer at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh, a job in which she fell in love¬, "an amazing fit," she said. Helen was deeply engaged with the local and international science communication community and was a rising star in informal science education in museums and science centers. In addition to blogging and her scholarly works, Helen's published science articles include Double X Science: "Bipolar Brings Anxieties Beyond Mood Shifts," and Discover: "How a Tick Bite Made Me Allergic to Meat".

She is survived by her husband, Eric Bowen, and daughter, Ursula, and her mother, Cynthia Chappell, and father Raymond Chappell, and brother, James Chappell. A memorial service will be held for her at the Morehead Planetarium in Chapel Hill on Wednesday, April 23, 2014 at 6:30 p.m. In lieu of flowers we ask that you please make donations to her Give Forward fund, which will go toward medical bills and her daughter's college.