Elizabeth Roemer

Elizabeth "Pat" Roemer (September 4, 1929 – April 8, 2016) was an American astronomer and educator who specialized in astronomy with a particular focus on comets and minor planets. She was well known for the recovery of lost comets, as well as for her discovery of two asteroids, the co-discovery of Jupiter's moon Themisto, and for the asteroid 1657 Roemera that was named in her honor.

Life Roemer was born on September 4, 1929, in Oakland, California, and was raised in Alameda, California, by her father and mother, Richard Quirin and Elsie B. Roemer. From a young age, Roemer expressed interest in scientific reasoning and matters regarding astronomy. It was revealed by Roemer in an interview that while she was a freshman in high school many of her teachers lacked the proper qualifications. This was because she was a student during the Second World War, when many individuals were teaching on emergency credentials. One of her general science teachers had made remarks with astronomical implications that Roemer believed to be incorrect. One of these statements was that Polaris was the largest star. Despite not having books or sources that contained the correct answers, Roemer was encouraged to look for the right answers elsewhere. She got in touch with a teaching assistant in the Astronomy Department at Berkeley who helped her find the information she was looking for. This marked the beginning of her interest in other aspects of astronomy.

Roemer graduated valedictorian of her high school class in 1946, and in that same year she won the National Westinghouse Science Talent Search. She became a serious amateur astronomer and was determined to pursue her interest in comets and asteroids. In 1950 she graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a BA in astronomy. She graduated with honors as a Bertha Dolbeer Scholar. This was no simple feat, as predicting the position and brightness of the comet was extremely difficult, especially for comets that had been missing for extended periods of time. Roemer's data and measurements of the brightness of these recovered comets at large distances has aided astronomers of her time and allowed for the tracking of many short period comets around the Sun until this day. She served at the observatory until 1997.

Major accomplishments In 1961, asteroid 1657 Roemera was named in her honor. Roemer expressed her hope that her Mademoiselle Merit Award would encourage others to explore the field of astronomy in a letter to the manager of Women's News for Westinghouse.

Death and legacy Elizabeth Roemer was an active member of the astronomy community until her death in 2016. She became a member of the Friends of Lowell Observatory in 2006, as well as a member of the Percival Lowell Society. Before dying, she made a donation that created what is known as the Elizabeth Roemer Foundation Donation. The money was used to create an instrumentation fund in the Lowell Observatory Foundation, supporting the acquisition, development, maintenance of, and access to improved technologies and materials within the observatory's facilities. Her support created safe and effective organization and operation of the observatory's equipment and technology.