Astronomer Biography 4

GENE AND CAROLYN SHOEMAKER

Eugene Shoemaker was born in 1928 in Los Angeles. As a boy he became interested in collecting and observing minerals and gemstones. He attended high school classes in elementary school, graduated from high school in two years, and attended the California Institute of Technology at the age of 16. He earned a master’s degree in geology in three years. In 1950 he married Carolyn Spellman, who would later help him with his work.

In 1948, he started inspecting various sources of uranium, such as volcanic vents and various craters, for the United States Geological Survey. He learned how to distinguish between craters created by underground forces and craters created by aboveground forces. He acquired a Ph.D. from Princeton for proving that the Meteor Crater near Flagstaff, Arizona had been caused by a meteor rather than a volcano, as was previously believed. At the Meteor Crater, he helped identify a unique mineral that was formed by great heat and pressure, which was called coesite. In 1960, while inspecting the Ries basin in Germany with his wife, Shoemaker found coesite, thereby proving that the 17-mile depression was actually a massive impact crater. He also showed that the craters on the moon were caused by comets and asteroids and not volcanoes.

Shoemaker started the Palomar Planet-Crossing Asteroid Survey in 1973. He and his colleague, Eleanor Helin, identified 70 asteroids that cross Earth’s orbit and could potentially collide with the planet. Shoemaker believed there could be up to 2000 of these objects. He supported the theory that an asteroid or comet caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Shoemaker had long dreamed of going to the moon, but this possibility was ruined when he was diagnosed with Addison’s disease in 1962. He played an important role in the eventual successes of the Apollo missions. He investigated the structure of the moon and helped improve geologic mapping techniques. He suggested ideal landing sites for the Apollo missions.

Carolyn started working with her husband at Mount Palomar when Eleanor Helin left in 1982. She learned how to use the telescope and helped Shoemaker search for asteroids in pictures of the sky. Shoemaker began to use a stereomicroscope, which was a geological tool, to help locate these objects. Carolyn would look through the microscope at pictures taken at different times to try to identify moving objects. Eugene and Carolyn discovered 32 comets and more than 800 asteroids.

Eugene’s friend David Levy joined the husband-and-wife team in 1988. In 1993, they took a photograph of part of the sky that included Jupiter at the time. When Carolyn looked at the picture on March 25, 1993, she discovered a comet, which was soon named Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9. This comet became famous, especially when it was announced in May of that year that it was on a collision course with Jupiter. The comet was caught by Jupiter’s gravity and pulled apart into 21 pieces, which then made visible impacts on the planet.

Eugene Shoemaker was a proponent for more funding to search for objects that could possibly collide with Earth. He predicted that a potentially devastating asteroid should hit Earth on average once every 100,000 years. Although he may be best-known for Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, he studied the other planets and their moons and is recognized as the founder of astrogeology. Shoemaker died in a car crash in 1997. Some of his ashes were carried to the moon on the Lunar Prospector in 1999.

Bibliography

"Gene Shoemaker." Encyclopedia of World Biography. 2nd ed. Vol. 20. Detroit: Gale, 2004. 335-338. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 29 Apr. 2010.

Marsden, Brian. "Eugene Shoemaker (1928-1997)." Web. < http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/sl9/news81.html >.

"Shoemaker, Carolyn (1929–)." Dictionary of Women Worldwide: 25,000 Women Through the Ages. Ed. Anne Commire and Deborah Klezmer. Vol. 2. Detroit: Yorkin Publications, 2007. 1719. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 29 Apr. 2010.

"USGS Astrogeology: Eugene M. Shoemaker." USGS Astrogeology Science Center. Web. < http://astrogeology.usgs.gov/About/People/GeneShoemaker/ >.