Fred Gillett

Frederick Carl Gillett (February 7, 1937 – April 22, 2001) was an American astronomer who was a pioneer of infrared astronomy. He was based successively at the University of California, San Diego, Kitt Peak National Observatory, and the International Gemini Observatory. His discoveries include the Vega phenomenon and the first unidentified infrared emission bands.

Biography Gillett was born on February 7, 1937, in Minot, North Dakota. He studied at the University of Minnesota, receiving a bachelor of science in physics in 1960. In 1960 he also married Marian Ruth DeGriselles, a registered nurse. As a graduate student at the university he took an interest in the new field of infrared astronomy, under the guidance of his doctoral advisor Edward P. Ney. Gillett travelled to Tucson, Arizona to use Frank Low's new infrared detector, a bolometer. With Low, he designed and built the first spectrometer that could measure infrared radiation with wavelengths of 8–14μm. He was awarded a Ph.D. in physics in 1966, one of the first doctorates awarded for infrared astronomy. This was the first discovered example of the now widely observed phenomenon known as unidentified infrared emission (UIE) bands. The exact causes of these emissions remain unidentified.

In 1973 he moved to Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) in Arizona where he introduced infrared instrumentation to the observatory. The project helped open up access to military infrared detector technology that had until then been classified. The Vega phenomenon, as it became known, provided the first solid evidence that planet formation occurs outside of the Solar System.

In 1987 Gillett took a two-year sabbatical to be a visiting senior scientist in the Office of Space Science at NASA's headquarters in Washington, D.C. The wide main belt asteroid 74509 Gillett is named in his honor.