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Nuclear astrophysics is an interdisciplinary field between nuclear physics and astrophysics.
This field includes nuclear reactions, as they occur in cosmic environments. There are also models of the kinds of astrophysical objects where these reactions may occur.
Hans Suess
Henri Becquerel
The geologist Hans Seuss, in the 1940s, had a speculation that the regularity that was observed in the abundance of elements were related to the structural properties of the atomic nucleus.
In 1896, Henri Becquerel, discovers radioactivity. There were also advances in chemistry, aimed at gold production.
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
This excitement culminated in the discovery of the atomic nucleus. Major milestones here, being, the 1911 scattering experiments of Ernest Rutherford and the discovery of the neutron by James Chadwick in 1932.
Francis Aston
Arthur Eddington
Francis Aston, will demonstrate that the mass of helium is less than 4 times that of the proton.
Arthur Eddington proposed that, through an unknown process in the Sun's core, hydrogen is transmuted into helium. This would liberate energy.
Hans Bethe and Carl von Weizsacker, 20 years later, will independently derive the CN cycle. This was the first known nuclear reactor that can accomplish this transmutation of hydrogen intro helium.
The reason for the time between Eddington's proposal and the proposal of the CN cycle was due to an incomplete understanding of nuclear structure.
George Gamow
In the 1940s, under the work of George Gamow, the concepts that describe stellar nucleosynthesis began to emerge.
William Fowler
Fred Hoyle
Cosmic nucleosynthesis came to its proper understanding in the 1950s when Fowler, Hoyle, and others, came up with it's complete processes.
Fowler won the 1983 Nobel Prize for his work on this collaboration between nuclear and astrophysics.
During these same years, Arthur Eddington, and others, linked these nuclear reactions with the structural equations of stars.
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