Fred Lawrence Whipple

+ Minor planets discovered: 1 1252 Celestia 19 February 1933 + Comets discovered: 6 C/1932 P1 6 August 1932 36P/Whipple 15 October 1933 C/1937 C1 7 February 1937 C/1940 O1 8 August 1940 C/1942 C1 25 January 1942 C/1942 X1 8 December 1942 with Leslie C. Peltier with John S. Paraskevopoulos with Giovanni Bernasconi and György Kulin with Carl Fedtke and G. A. Tevzadze

Fred Lawrence Whipple (November 5, 1906 – August 30, 2004) was an American astronomer, who worked at the Harvard College Observatory for more than 70 years. Among his achievements were asteroid and comet discoveries, the "dirty snowball" hypothesis of comets, and the invention of the Whipple shield.

Early life and education Fred Lawrence Whipple was born on November 5, 1906, in Red Oak, Iowa. His parents were farmers. His father, Harry Lawrence Whipple, was of English ancestry; his mother, Celeste MacFarland Whipple, was of Scottish and Irish ancestry. Harry Whipple served as an elder in a Presbyterian church. Fred's younger brother died when he was four. When Fred was 15, the family moved to Long Beach, California, where his father opened a grocery store. An early bout with polio ended his ambition of being a professional tennis player. Whipple studied at Occidental College in Southern California, but after one semester there he transferred to the University of California at Los Angeles where he majored in mathematics, graduating in 1927.

Whipple became bored with mathematics, and after taking a class in astronomy, taught by Frederick C. Leonard, He also discovered or co-discovered five other non-periodic comets, the first of which was C/1932 P1 Peltier-Whipple, while his last was C/1942 X1 (Whipple–Fedtke–Tevzadze). Brian G. Marsden called the device "essentially a type of lawn mower". One article was about a crewed flight to the Moon; by their estimates, it "could happen within 25 years". In another article Whipple proposed to put a telescope into space. where he proposed the "icy conglomerate" hypothesis of comet composition (later called the "dirty snowball" hypothesis). Criticized at first, the hypothesis was mostly confirmed when ESA's Giotto photographed the Halley's Comet in 1986. Whipple was best-known for his work on comets, and was even nicknamed Dr. Comet by the press. Whipple's articles on comets were called "the most-cited works in the Astrophysical Journal during the past half century".

In 1954, Whipple was invited to participate in a meeting at the Office of Naval Research regarding the first US artificial satellite. After the meeting, Whipple became the head of Project Orbiter, which proposed to launch it in 1955. The project was not chosen for development; no satellite was launched in 1955. In 1999, Whipple became the oldest scientist involved in a NASA project, working on the CONTOUR mission to a comet, led by his former student Joseph Veverka. Whipple was also an artist; one of his interest was what he called a "stochastic painting":

Awards and honors Fred Whipple, left, and Leonard Carmichael, seventh Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, when Whipple won the President's Award presented by John F. Kennedy, 1962

In 1963, Whipple was awarded with President's Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service for his work on the satellite tracking network. Whipple later said that "I think that was my most exciting moment, when I was able to invite my parents and my family to the Rose Garden for the award ceremony".

1941: Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1949: J. Lawrence Smith Medal of the National Academy of Sciences 1959: Elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences 1963: President's Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service, by US President John F. Kennedy 1973: Joseph Henry Medal of the Smithsonian Institution 1983: Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society 1986: Bruce Medal of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific Whipple Observatory on Mount Hopkins in Arizona Whipple House on Great Camanoe in the British Virgin Islands Whipple, proposed NASA spacecraft to observe the Oort cloud