Fred L. Whipple
| Fred Lawrence Whipple | |
|---|---|
Fred Lawrence Whipple aged 95
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| Born |
November 5, 1906 Red Oak, Iowa |
| Died | August 30, 2004 (aged 97) Cambridge, Massachusetts |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | Astronomy |
| Institutions | Harvard College Observatory |
| Known for | Composition of comets |
Fred Lawrence Whipple (November 5, 1906 – August 30, 2004) was an American astronomer, who worked at the Harvard College Observatory for over 70 years. Amongst his achievements, he discovered some asteroids and comets, came up with the "dirty snowball" cometary hypothesis, and invented the Whipple shield.
Whipple was born on November 5, 1906, in Red Oak, Iowa, as the son of a farmer. An early bout with polio ended his ambition of being a professional tennis player. Whipple studied at Occidental College in Southern California, then majored in mathematics at the University of California at Los Angeles, graduating in 1927. Recollecting his path from mathematics to astronomy, Whipple stated in a 1978 autobiography that his "mathematics major veered [him] through physics and finally focused on astronomy where time, space, mathematics, and physics had a common meeting ground."
After taking a class in astronomy, he enlisted at the University of California, Berkeley where he obtained his PhD in Astronomy in 1931. While in graduate school, he helped map the orbit of the then newly discovered dwarf planet Pluto. He joined Harvard College Observatory in 1931 and studied the trajectories of meteors, confirming that they originated within the solar system rather than from interstellar space. In 1933, he discovered the periodic comet 36P/Whipple and the asteroid 1252 Celestia. He also discovered or co-discovered five other non-periodic comets, the first of which was C/1932 P1 Peltier-Whipple, independently discovered by the famed amateur astronomer Leslie Peltier.
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