William Mason Kaula

William M. Kaula (May 19, 1926 – April 1, 2000) was an Australian-born American geophysicist and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

UCLA professor Kaula was Professor of Geophysics at the Institute for Geophysics and Planetary Physics, UCLA (1963 – 1992). He was a participant in several NASA missions, including as Laser Altimeter principal investigator on Apollo 15, 16, and 17.

Honors and legacy He was a fellow (1964) and recipient of the Whitten Medal of the American Geophysical Union, the Brouwer Award of the American Astronomical Society, and NASA Medal for exceptional scientific achievement (1983). He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences for his scientific contributions notwithstanding his not having a doctorate, a rare such instance. The American Geophysical Union instituted the William Kaula Award (2003) in his honor.

Selected publications Statistical and Harmonic Analysis of Gravity (1959) Journal of Geophysical Research Volume 64, Issue 12 Analysis of Gravitational and Geometric Aspects of Geodetic Utilization of Satellites (1961) NASA Technical Note D-572 A Geoid and World Geodetic System based on a combination of gravimetric, astro-geodetic, and satellite data (1961) NASA Technical Note D-702 Celestial Geodesy (1962) NASA Technical Note D-1155 A review of geodetic parameters (1963) NASA Technical Note D-1847 Tesseral harmonics of the gravitational field and geodetic datum shifts derived from camera observations of satellites (1963) Journal of Geophysical Research Improved geodetic results from camera observations of satellites (1963) Journal of Geophysical Research Determination of the Earth's gravitational field (1963) Reviews of Geophysics Volume 1, Issue 4 Theory of Satellite Geodesy; applications of satellites to geodesy (1966) Blaisdell Publishing An Introduction to Planetary Physics; the terrestrial planets (1968) Wiley The Terrestrial Environment: Solid Earth and Ocean Physics (1970) NASA Conference Report 1579 Geodesy: trends and prospects (1978) National Academies Press Applications of Geodesy to Geodynamics: 1. Geodesy for Geodynamics, Progress and Problems (1979) Eos, Transactions of the American Geophysical Union Volume 60, Issue 23 Earth science: The changing shape of the Earth (1983) Nature Volume 303, Issue 5920:756 Venus: a contrast in evolution to Earth (1990) Science 247:1191-96 Constraints on Venus evolution from radiogenic argon (1999) Icarus 139:32-39