Gehrels, Tom

Фамилия:  Gehrels
Имя:  Tom

Tom Gehrels is Professor of Planetary Sciences and an astronomer at the University of Arizona in Tucson (USA). During World War II, he was active in the Dutch Resistance and an organizer for the Special Operations Executive (SOE). He pioneered the first photometric system for asteroids in the 1950s, as well as a system of analyzing wavelength dependence for polarization of stars and planets in the 1960s. He was also Principal Investigator for the Imaging Photopolarimeter experiment on the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 first flybys of Jupiter and Saturn in the 1970s. Dr. Gehrels initiated the Space Science Series of textbooks, for which he was general editor. He also initiated the Spacewatch Program and, until 1997, was its Principal Investigator (PI) for electronic surveying; their goal was to obtain statistics about asteroids and comets, including near-Earth asteroids. He has participated in the discovery of over 4000 asteroids, as well as a number of comets. Besides teaching at the University of Arizona, Dr. Gehrels also lectures at the Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad (India), where he is a Lifetime Fellow. This is a United Nations program for graduate students from a variety of countries, from Uzbekistan to North Korea. Presently, his research focuses on universal evolution. He was winner of the 2007 Harold Masursky Award for his outstanding service to planetary science.