Ewen Whitaker
| Ewen A. Whitaker | |
|---|---|
| Born |
22 June 1922 London, England |
| Died | 11 October 2016 (aged 94) Tucson, Arizona, U.S. |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | Astronomer |
Ewen Adair Whitaker (22 June 1922 – 11 October 2016) was a British-born astronomer who from 1951 specialized in lunar studies. During WW2 he was engaged in quality control—by UV spectrographic analysis—of the lead sheathing of hollow cables strung under the English Channel as part of the secret Project PLUTO (Pipe Line Under The Ocean) to supply gasoline to Allied military vehicles in France. After the war he obtained a position at the Royal Greenwich Observatory working on the UV spectra of stars, but became interested in lunar studies. As a sideline, Whitaker drew and published in 1954 the first accurate chart of the South Polar area of the Moon and served as director of the Lunar Section of the British Astronomical Association.
After meeting Dr. Gerard P. Kuiper, Director of Yerkes Observatory, Wisconsin, USA, at an International Astronomical Union meeting in Dublin in 1955, he was invited to join Kuiper's fledgling Lunar Project at Yerkes to work on producing a high-quality photographic atlas of the Moon. The dawn of the Space Age with the launch of the Russian Sputnik 1 soon put the Lunar Project in NASA's limelight.
In 1960 Whitaker followed Kuiper to the University of Arizona where the small Lunar Project evolved into the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (LPL) with over 300 scientists, technicians, and supporting staff. The resulting Photographic Lunar Atlas, Orthographic Atlas of the Moon (giving accurate positions on the lunar surface), and the Rectified Lunar Atlas (giving astronaut-eye views of the whole lunar nearside) proved to be invaluable for the planning and operational stages of later spacecraft missions to the Moon. Whitaker was involved with several NASA missions, including successfully locating the landing site of the Surveyor 3. This was used to set the landing site for the Apollo 12 mission whose astronauts visited the Surveyor lander.
...
Wikipedia