George Wallerstein

George Wallerstein (January 13, 1930 The son of German immigrants, he was raised in New York City during the Great Depression. In school he developed an interest in boxing and won the senior class boxing award. He graduated from Brown University in 1951 before receiving his M.S. and Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology.

In 2002, he won the Henry Norris Russell Lectureship. In 2004, he was presented the President's Award by the United Negro College Fund for his contributions to diversity. of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, the research arm of Council for a Livable World.

He was elected a Legacy Fellow of the American Astronomical Society in 2020.

American astrophysicist Emily Levesque described Wallerstein in her 2020 popular science book The Last Stargazers: The Enduring Story of Astronomy's Vanishing Explorers: "George is a champion boxer, a licensed pilot, an accomplished mountaineer, and an award-winning humanitarian. [...] In pretty much any research discussion, George can be counted on to chime in and recite, from memory, exact results from hundreds of scientific papers dating back to the 1930s along with a choice tale or two about the researchers who did the work".