Ewen Whitaker papers

Ewen Adair Whitaker (1922-2016) was a British-born astronomer specializing in lunar studies since 1951. He was a founding member of the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (LPL) from 1960 until his retirement in 1987. Over his career Whitaker quite possibly developed the best knowledge of the geography, or selenography, of the lunar surface of anyone alive. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Arizona in 2011.

Ewen Whitaker's research was fundamental to the success of the manned lunar program. He pioneered the technique of groundbased differential UV/Infrared lunar photography, resulting in the first compositional maps of lava flows on the Moon. These maps, scientifically important in their own right, were also instrumental to the selection of landing sites for the Surveyor and Apollo missions. In 1961, he was tasked with selecting impact sites for Rangers 6 and 7. He later located the landed positions of four Surveyors; the Surveyor 3 site was eventually chosen as the Apollo 12 landing site. He also selected sites for Lunar Orbiter 5. Whitaker briefed astronauts for Apollo missions 13, 15, and 16. He analyzed Apollo images and located the impact craters formed by the Ranger 7 and 9 spacecraft and the Apollo 13 and 14 3-stage launching system modules. Knowing the masses, impact velocities, and impact angles of these craters meant that equations for impact mechanics could be tested and refined.

Whitaker was born June 22, 1922 in London. By age 8, he became interested in science and the moon when he was gifted a children’s encyclopedia for Christmas. He later received a scholarship to study at The John Roan School, Maze Hill. Whitaker hoped to attend the University of London, however, during World War II, many universities were relocated to the countryside for protection, and Whitaker stayed close to home to help support his ailing mother. Instead he got a job at Seimens and was engaged in quality control, by UV spectrographic analysis, of the lead sheathing of hollow cables strung under the English Channel (secret Project PLUTO, Pipe Line Under the Ocean) to supply gasoline to Allied vehicles in France. He obtained a position at the Royal Greenwich Observatory, engaged in UV spectra of stars, but became interested in lunar studies as a sideline, and illustrated and published in 1954, the first accurate chart of the South Polar area of the Moon. After meeting Dr. Gerard P. Kuiper, Director of Yerkes Observatory, Wisconsin, at an International Astronomical Union (IAU) congress in Dublin in 1955, he was invited to join Kuiper's fledgling Lunar Project at Yerkes, to work on producing the best available photographic atlas of the Moon. Russian-constructed Sputniks heralded the dawn of the Space Age in 1957, and the Lunar Project was soon in NASA's limelight. The Photographic Lunar Atlas, Orthographic Atlas of the Moon (giving accurate positions on the lunar surface), and Rectified Lunar Atlas (giving astronauts-eye views of the whole lunar nearside) proved to be invaluable for the planning and operational stages of later spacecraft missions to the Moon. The small Lunar Project moved to the University of Arizona in 1960 and became the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (LPL). After retiring from LPL he remained a member of the International Astronomical Union Task Group for Lunar Nomenclature.

Whitaker chose 14 favorably located farside craters to commemorate the Challenger and Columbia astronauts who lost their lives in the two disasters. These were also adopted internationally over competing suggestions. He also determined, with considerable confidence, the dates on which Galileo made his drawings of the Moon and composed the various relevant sections of his Sidereus Nuncius. Additionally, he devised a logical lettering system for designating unnamed craters on the Moon's farside. This was adopted unanimously for universal use by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in 2006, as was the corrected list of letters for nearside craters which Whitaker helped compile in 1982.

Whitaker was married 67 years to Beryl Horswell. They have three children: Malcolm, Graham and Fiona.