[meteorite-list] Obituary: Alastair G.W. Cameron, Noted Astrophysicist and Space Scientist

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri Oct 21 17:47:58 2005
Message-ID: <200510212146.j9LLkbd27714_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

OBITUARY: ALASTAIR G.W. CAMERON, NOTED ASTROPHYSICIST AND SPACE SCIENTIST
>From UA Office of University Communications, 520-621-1877
October 21, 2005

------------------------------------------------------
Contacts for more information are listed at the end of this release
------------------------------------------------------


Alastair G.W. (Graham Walter) Cameron, 80, one of the great astrophysicists
of the 20th century, died of heart failure in Tucson, Ariz., on Oct. 3.

Cameron, was born June 21, 1925, in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He sought to unlock
the fundamental mysteries of the universe, the stars and the solar system.
His public service influenced the course of the U.S. planetary exploration
program over the past few decades.

Cameron did fundamental research in astrophysics, planetary sciences, and
meteoritics. He was among the first to develop the theory of nucleosynthesis
? the production of the chemical elements in stars ? and to advocate that
the formation of the moon resulted from a giant impact on the early Earth by
an object at least the size of Mars.

Cameron was a scholar, researcher, advisor, editor and distinguished member
and fellow of many prestigious and leading scientific organizations and
associations. He was a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and a
fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Royal Society
of Canada. Cameron was also a fellow of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, the Meteoritical Society, and the American
Geophysical Union.

Among his many advisory roles, Cameron said his most important was as
chairman of the Space Science Board of the National Academy of Sciences from
1976 to 1982.

He spent 26 years of his academic career at Harvard University beginning in
1973 as associate director for planetary sciences at the Harvard-Smithsonian
Center for Astrophysics and, later, as head of Harvard's astronomy
department. He was named professor emeritus at Harvard University and
appointed the Donald H. Menzel Research Professor of Astrophysics in 1999, a
position he held at the time of his death.

At the time of his death he was also a senior research scientist in the
Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at The University of Arizona. He was a member
of the Arizona Senior Academy in Tucson, which is a non-profit organization
devoted to life-long learning, thinking and doing.

Cameron's research interests included nucleosynthesis and associated areas
of nuclear physics, stellar evolution, supernova explosions, neutron stars,
star and planet formation, physics of planets and planetary atmospheres. He
considered the main objective of his scientific research was to understand
the structures and origins of astronomical objects and systems.

"As I look back on the account of my research career, I am struck by how
fortunate I have been in the timing of my research opportunities. My
training was in nuclear physics, and the field of nuclear astrophysics
opened up just at the right time for me," he said in Adventures in
Cosmogony, a retrospective of his career as he approached his retirement
published in 1999.

He became a leader and innovator in the application of emerging computer
technology for solving astrophysics problems.

He was a champion for academic freedom and a proponent for government
funding to support basic research as a means to further technical
development and applied research in many areas of knowledge, including the
sciences.

Among his many awards and medals of recognition for his contribution to the
sciences was the R.M. Petrie Prize Lecture Award from the Canadian
Astronomical Society in 1970, the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal,
awarded in 1983, the J. Lawrence Smith Medal from the National Academy of
Sciences in 1988, the Harry H. Hess Medal from the American Geophysical
Union in 1989, the Leonard Medal from the Meteoritical Society for his
outstanding contributions to the science of meteoritics in 1994, and the
Russell Lecturer prize from the American Astronomical Society, awarded to
him in 1997 for a lifetime of preeminence in astronomical research.

Five days before his death, Cameron was notified that he had also been
named the 2006 recipient of the Hans A. Bethe prize from the Division of
Nuclear Physics of the American Physical Society "for his pioneering work in
developing the fundamental concepts of nuclear astrophysics. These basic
ideas, laid out almost 50 years ago, are still the basis of current research
in this field," the society said.

His numerous published works spanned decades. His last research article,
"Some Nucleosynthesis Effects Associated with R-Process Jets," was published
in 2003 in the Astrophysical Journal.

Cameron began his career as an undergraduate at the University of Manitoba,
Canada, during the final years of World War II. Later he earned a doctorate
in nuclear physics at the University of Saskatchewan, with renowned Canadian
physicist Leon Katz as his thesis advisor.

In between the two degrees, he worked at Chalk River, Ontario, on the
atomic energy project of the National Research Council of Canada. He
continued his academic career with an assistant professorship at Iowa State
College, applying nuclear physics to astrophysical problems. He later
returned to Chalk River before immigrating to the United States in 1959,
when he worked at the California Institute of Technology. He was among the
first to be hired by NASA's newly established Goddard Institute for Space
Studies in 1961 and took a leading role in organizing scientific
conferences, which helped give the institute an academic flavor.

He was a visiting lecturer at Yale for six years from 1962, when he became
involved in many branches of science, including nuclear physics,
astrophysics, geophysics, planetary science and meteoritics.

He moved to the Belfer Graduate School of Science of Yeshiva University in
New York in 1966 before joining Harvard seven years later.

His grandfather, C.N. Bell, was an officer of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange
for many years. His father, A.T. Cameron, was a professor of biochemistry at
the Manitoba Medical College. Cameron was predeceased by his wife Elizabeth
in 2001. He is survived by his sister, Janet Matthews; his niece, Valerie
Matthews Lemieux; her husband, Ron Lemieux, and their family of Winnipeg.

The Arizona Senior Academy held a memorial service for Cameron in Tucson on
Oct. 11.

------------------------------------------

For more information, please contact:
   
 Michael J. Drake, head and director
 UA Lunar and Planetary Laboratory
 520-621-6962 drake_at_lpl.arizona.edu

 Marcia Neugebauer, president
 The Arizona Senior Academy
 520-647-3833 mneugeb_at_lpl.arizona.edu

 W. David Arnett, Regents Professor
 UA astronomy department
 520-529-1164 darnett_at_as.arizona.edu

 Katharina Lodders, associate research professor
 Earth and planetary sciences department
 Washington University
 313-935-4851 wustl.edu
Received on Fri 21 Oct 2005 05:46:37 PM PDT