Whipple, Fred Lawrence

▪ 2005

      American astronomer (b. Nov. 5, 1906, Red Oak, Iowa—d. Aug. 30, 2004, Cambridge, Mass.), was an expert on meteors, meteorites, and comets. In 1950 he hypothesized that a comet has a nucleus that is made up of a mixture of dust and frozen water, ammonia, methane, and carbon dioxide and that some of the frozen material is vaporized by solar energy as the comet passes through the inner solar system. This idea, which became known as the dirty-snowball theory, was confirmed in 1986 by close-up space-probe images of Halley's Comet and was an important contribution to the understanding of the solar system. In the 1950s, at the beginning of the space age, he helped develop a satellite-tracking network. Whipple received a Ph.D. (1931) in astronomy from the University of California, Berkeley. He joined (1931) the staff at Harvard College Observatory and was a professor (1950–77) of astronomy at Harvard University. He also served as director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, from 1955 until 1973, when he helped complete a merger between the two observatories. He received a gold medal (1983) from the Royal Astronomical Society. Whipple discovered six comets, all of which bear his name.

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