The White Dwarf Cooling Age and Initial-Final Mass Relationship -- Constraints from Open Star Clusters.

We propose to use the combination of GMOS (imaging and spectroscopy) and results from the CFHT Open Star Cluster Survey (Kalirai et al. 2001a) to establish a global semi-empirical relationship for the white dwarf initial-final mass relation (WDIFMR) and therefore constrain the evolution and star formation history of the Galaxy. We have identified all white dwarf (WD) candidates as faint as V = 25 in several of the richest clusters in the Northern Hemisphere, and now, for the first time, can obtain spectra for hundreds of white dwarfs for which the distances are accurately known.