Virginia Norwood

Virginia Tower Norwood (January 8, 1927 – March 26, 2023) was an American aerospace engineer, inventor, and physicist. She was best known for her contribution to the Landsat program, having designed the Multispectral Scanner which was first used on Landsat 1. She has been called "The Mother of Landsat" for this work.

Early life and education Virginia Tower was born on January 8, 1927, at Fort Totten in New York City, United States He was an Army officer, had a master's degree in physics, and later taught at Carnegie Tech. Her mother was skilled in mathematics and languages and studied independently. Her father actively encouraged young Virginia's interest in physics and mathematics; he gave her a slide rule when she was nine years old, and helped to develop her mathematical skills. The family moved around with her father's military career, living in Panama, Oklahoma, and Bermuda.

Norwood was accepted into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a partial scholarship in 1944.

Norwood retired in 1989. The award recognizes achievements in the scientific and technical remote sensing community, as well as contributions leading to successful practical applications of remote sensing. The award is sponsored jointly by the U.S. Department of the Interior and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

In 2021, Norwood was given an Honorary Lifetime Achievement Award

Norwood was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in February 2023 and in 2025 posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Personal life Virginia Tower married Lawrence Russell Norwood, her third-semester calculus instructor and the president of the MIT mathematics club. They married on the day after she completed her bachelor's degree in mathematics.