ABSTRACT:
Understanding the origin of the elements is one of the major challenges of modern astrophysics. The heavy element uranium can only be produced by one nucleosynthesis process, the r-process, yet after half a century astronomers still lack a definitive association of this process with an astrophysical site. I have made it my business to improve the state of observations of r-process material in other stars. I will highlight recent success at detecting previously-undetected elements in ancient halo stars using the Hubble Space Telescope. I will also point out yet another way that globular clusters are not simple stellar populations. This particular chemical anomaly has the potential to probe the early epochs of globular cluster formation in a new way and pinpoint one major site of r-process nucleosynthesis.