Ewen Whitaker
British-born astronomer
Died when: 94 years 111 days (1131 months)Star Sign: Cancer
Ewen Adair Whitaker (22 June 1922 – 11 October 2016) was a British-born astronomer who specialized in lunar studies.During World War II he was engaged in quality control for the lead sheathing of hollow cables strung under the English Channel as part of the "Pipe Line Under The Ocean" Project (PLUTO) 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 the first accurate chart of the South Polar area of the Moon in 1954, and served as director of the Lunar Section of the British Astronomical Association.
After meeting Dr.Gerard P.Kuiper, Director of Yerkes Observatory in 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 Surveyor 3.This was used to set the landing site for the Apollo 12 mission whose astronauts visited the Surveyor lander.
Whitaker was considered by some to be the world's leading expert on lunar mapping and nomenclature.He was active in the IAU's Task Group for Lunar Nomenclature, and in 1999 he published a book on the history of lunar mapping and nomenclature, titled "Mapping and Naming the Moon." Whitaker retired from the LPL in 1978, becoming research scientist emeritus.
He remained in Tucson, Arizona, until his death on 11 October 2016; his wife, Beryl, had died in 2013.Ewen Whitaker's papers are held at the University of Arizona Special Collections Library.