Trevor C. Weekes

Trevor Cecil Weekes (1940, Dublin, Ireland – 2014, Sahuarita, Arizona) was an Irish-born, American astronomer and pioneer of gamma-ray astronomy.

In 1964 Trevor Weekes married Ann Katherine Owens. He and his wife immigrated to the United States in 1966 and for a brief time lived in Boston. that scavenged parts from searchlight mirrors to experiment with gamma-ray detection in Arizona's Santa Rita Mountains. From 1967 to 1969 on Arizona's Mount Hopkins, Weekes, in collaboration with George H. Rieke, used two searchlight mirrors (each 1.5 meter in diameter) to make observations in the TeV range of gamma rays. In 1969 Tevor Weekes was appointed Resident Director of the Mount Hopkins Observatory, which in 1981 was renamed Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory. He spent his career living with his family in Sahuarita, Arizona and working for the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, which from 1978 to 1982 suspended research in gamma-ray astronomy — during those years he did research in optical astronomy.

Weekes was the instigator of the ground-based gamma-ray observatory named VERITAS (Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System). After some difficulties in securing a site, an array of four 12-meter optical reflectors was built near the visitors' center about halfway up to the summit of Mount Hopkins. VERITAS became operational in 2007. and in 2005 the University of Chicago awarded him honorary degrees. In 2002 he was elected an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy. In 2013 the "Trevorfest" was held in Tucson.

Selected publications

Books

(See Multiple Mirror Telescope.)