Arthur B. C. Walker, Jr.

Arthur Bertram Cuthbert Walker Jr. (August 24, 1936 – April 29, 2001) was an American solar physicist and a pioneer of EUV/XUV optics. He developed normal incidence multilayer XUV telescopes to photograph the solar corona. Two of his sounding rocket payloads, the Stanford/MSFC Rocket Spectroheliograph Experiment and the Multi-Spectral Solar Telescope Array, recorded the first full-disk, high-resolution images of the Sun in XUV with conventional geometries of normal incidence optics. This technology is used in solar telescopes such as SOHO/EIT and TRACE, and in the fabrication of microchips via ultraviolet photolithography.

Early life and education Walker was born in Cleveland, Ohio on August 24, 1936, to Arthur and Hilda Walker. He was an only child. Arthur moved to New York City at the age of five. Arthur attended Bronx High School of Science. His dissertation for his doctorate titled, “Photo meson Production from Neutrons Bound in Helium and Deuterium,” Much of his career involved using rocket technology and satellites to study the Sun's atmosphere at the ultraviolet and X-ray levels. Walker also set up an informal advocacy association with other black faculty members called the "Banneker Group". Walker believed that Barbee's multilayered thin films would provide improved images for an X-ray telescope. This new technology was the basis of the dark matter detection method advanced by Professor Blas Cabrera of Stanford's physics department. Walker was survived by his second wife Victoria, a daughter, Heather M. M. Walker; two stepsons, Nigel D. Gibbs and Eric D. Gibbs; and four grandchildren.