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Planetary News: Space People (2004)Fred L. Whipple, World-Renowned Comet Pioneer, Dies at 97By A. J. S. RaylAugust 31, 2004
Fred Lawrence Whipple, the oldest living astronomer and planetary science pioneer who proposed that comets were 'dirty snowballs,' passed away yesterday at a Cambridge, Massachusetts hospital, following a prolonged illness. He was 97. Fred Lawrence Whipple, the oldest living astronomer and planetary science pioneer who proposed that comets were 'dirty snowballs,' passed away yesterday at a Cambridge, Massachusetts hospital, following a prolonged illness. He was 97. "He was one of the fixed stars in the firmament of personalities that came about in planetary science," says Planetary Society co-founder Bruce Murray, former director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and a recipient of the Whipple Award, given for his contributions to planetary science by the American Geophysical Union (AGU). "He was there before there was a field. He was there because he was interested in small objects like comets and asteroids and there was hardly anybody else in that world then. For those of us who came in at the beginning of the Space Age, he was a giant and had a big influence on how things got started in planetary science." "Fred Whipple was the Dean of cometary scientists," adds Wes Huntress president of the Planetary Society, and director of the Geophysical Laboratory at the Carnegie Institute of Washington. "All understanding of these cosmic apparitions begins with Fred. The rest of us have just been refining and confirming what he already knew. Fred is to comets what DaVinci is to the Mona Lisa." "His name is synonymous with comets," echoes Don Yeomans, of JPL, manager of NASA's Near Earth Object Program office. A leader in 20th century astronomy, Whipple transformed the study of comets in 1950-'51 when he hypothesized that these celestial bodies were not sand held together by gravity or 'sandbags' as was widely believed, but "icy conglomerates" made of rock, dust and ice -- what the press dubbed "dirty snowballs." He also proposed that comet tails contain particles that originate from frozen reservoirs in comet nuclei, theorizing that as a comet approaches the Sun, the heat vaporizes ice in the comet's nucleus and produces a coma or tail of particles that function much like a rocket engine that either slows or accelerates the icy body. His "icy conglomerates" theory caught the imagination of the public even as it revolutionized comet science. In 1986, Whipple's theories were shown to be correct when the European Space Agency's Giotto spacecraft obtained close-up photographs of Haley's comet and its nucleus. A discoverer of six comets, Whipple was the Phillips Professor of Astronomy Emeritus at Harvard University and a Senior Physicist at Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO). For years he could be easily identified on the streets of Cambridge as he tooled around in his car which sported a license plate that read: COMETS. Born in Red Oak, Iowa, on November 5, 1906, Whipple studied at Occidental College and earned his undergraduate degree in mathematics at the University of California at Los Angeles. He didn't set his sights on astronomy, however, until a bout with polio brought his dream of being a tennis champion to an abrupt halt. He moved on to UC Berkeley to obtain his Ph.D. degree in astronomy and in 1930 was one of the first to compute an orbit for the newly discovered planet Pluto. In 1931, doctorate in hand, he accepted a position at the Harvard College Observatory. Whipple directed the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) from 1955 to 1973, before it joined with the Harvard College Observatory to form the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Although Whipple is best known for his work on comets, he was a man of many research interests, and the scope and breadth of his scientific contributions is extraordinary. "He made significant contributions to fields as diverse as meteor astronomy, satellite tracking, variable stars, supernova, stellar evolution, astronomical instrumentation and radio astronomy," Yeomans points out.
Whipple also contributed to Earthly as well as celestial challenges. During World War II, he co-invented a cutting device that converted lumps of tinfoil into thousands of fragments known as chaff. Allied aircraft would release the chaff to confuse enemy radar by giving the impression that a much larger number of planes were about to attack. That invention garnered him the unofficial, honorary title of 'Chief of Chaff' in the United States Air Force. He was, friends say, particularly proud of this invention, for which President Harry S. Truman awarded him a Certificate of Merit. In 1946, he married Babette F. Samelson. They had two daughters, Sandra and Laura. He also had a son, Earle Raymond, by his first marriage. Whipple's influence on the early era of spaceflight cannot be underestimated. "To some degree, a series of very popular articles in Collier's magazine by Fred Whipple and Wernher von Braun in the early 1950's sparked the U.S. involvement in space exploration," Yeomans says. Aware of the potential damage to spacecraft from meteors, Whipple invented the Meteor Bumper -- also known as the Whipple Shield -- a thin, protective outer skin of metal for spacecraft. When meteors hit a spacecraft, the 'bumper' causes them to disintegrate, leaving only residual vapor and sparing the spacecraft from receiving catastrophic damage. Improved versions of the Whipple Shield are still in use today and, for example, protected the Stardust spacecraft during its encounter with comet Tempel 1 earlier this year. Along with a few other scientists, Whipple had the foresight to envision the era of artificial satellites. Only he, as it turned out, had both the imagination and the managerial skill to organize a worldwide network of amateur astronomers to track these then hypothetical objects and to determine their orbits. When Sputnik I was successfully launched on October 4, 1957, Whipple's group was the only one prepared and Cambridge became a nerve center of the earliest part of the space age. Whipple and some of his staff were even featured on the cover of Life magazine for their satellite tracking prowess. Later, also under Whipple's leadership, SAO developed an optical tracking system for satellites using a network of Baker-Nunn cameras. That network achieved spectacular success. "It tracked satellites so well that astronomers were able to determine the exact shape of the Earth from its gravitational effects on satellite orbits," according to Myron Lecar, of SAO. For his work on the network, Whipple received from President John F. Kennedy in 1963 the Distinguished Federal Civilian Service award. "I think that was my most exciting moment, when I was able to invite my parents and my family to the Rose Garden for the award ceremony," Whipple reflected in a 2001 interview. In the late 1960s, Whipple selected Mount Hopkins in southern Arizona as the site for a new SAO astronomical facility. Whipple was part of the group that initiated a novel and low-cost approach to building large telescopes first realized in the construction of the Multiple Mirror Telescope, a joint project of SAO and the University of Arizona. Mt. Hopkins Observatory was renamed Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory in 1981. His two-volume collected works appeared in 1972 and he officially retired from Harvard in 1977, but Whipple continued his research publications for another quarter century and his comet work continued almost to the end of his lifetime. He continued to bicycle to SAO six days a week until he was 90, and in 1999, he was chosen to work on NASA's Contour mission, becoming the oldest researcher ever to accept such a post. "Fred Whipple was one of those rare individuals who affected our lives in many ways. He predicted the coming age of satellites, he revolutionized the study of comets and as Director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, he helped form the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics," Charles Alcock, current director of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said in a statement. Whipple's change of concept from the generally accepted "flying sandbank" model was "one of the most important contributions to solar system studies in the 20th century," added Brian Marsden, director of the Minor Planet Center located at SAO. "I think many people would agree that that was a really shining moment in his scientific career." A 2003 survey by The Astrophysical Journal showed that Whipple's 1950 and 1951 scientific papers on the "icy conglomerate" model were the most cited papers in past 50 years. Throughout his lifetime, Whipple remained, admirably, unaffected by his fame and lived by a principle of equality. "Fred Whipple was one of the few greats ones in twentieth century Planetary Science. Yet through it all, he remained just Fred to all who knew him," says Yeomans. "I first met him in 1970 when my wife and I were on our honeymoon in Russia and I was attending a meeting on comets. Fred was kind to us from the moment we met him and while Fred and I attended the scientific sessions, his delightful wife Babbie showed my new bride around Leningrad. Whether you were a young student or a distinguished internationally recognized scientist, he treated everyone with the same kindness and respect. The entire Planetary Science community has benefited immeasurably from his wide-ranging insights; we've lost a creative scientist and a kind mentor but he remains a superb role model for us all." |
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