Gerard P. Kuiper papers
The Gerard P. Kuiper Papers (MS 480).Gerard P. Kuiper sitting at his desk looking through a book. Photo by Dennis Milon.
Collection area: History of Science University of Arizona
Collection dates: 1894-1992 bulk (bulk 1949-1973)
This collection consists of the personal and professional papers of Gerard Peter Kuiper. The bulk of the material consists of his correspondence with other noted astronomers and scientists. His research including his work with NASA on the Ranger, Apollo, Mariner, Surveyor, Viking, and Orbiter Projects during the late 1950s through the early 1970s. Other items in the collection are his administrative papers pertaining to the Lunar Planetary Laboratory, publications; newspaper clippings; and photographs. There is also detailed account of Kuiper’s involvement as a member of the ALSOS mission in Germany in 1945 and the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union following World War II.
Gerard P. Kuiper was born in The Netherlands in the town of Harenkarspel on December 7, 1905. He entered Leiden University in 1924 and received his Bachelor of Science in 1927. Kuiper immediately continued his graduate studies and received his Ph.D. in Astronomy in 1933. While completing his advanced studies, he was an assistant observer at the Leiden Observatory, 1928-1933. From 1933-1935, he was a Kellogg Fellow under American astronomer Robert Grant Aiken at Lick Observatory, Mount Hamilton, California.
In 1935, Kuiper went to Harvard College Observatory, Cambridge, Massachusetts as a lecturer in Astronomy. There he met Sara Parker Fuller and they married on June 20, 1936. They had two children, Paul Hayes (born in 1941) and Sylvia Lucy Ann (born in 1947). In 1936, Gerard Kuiper accepted a job at Yerkes Observatory of the University of Chicago as an assistant professor of Practical Astronomy. In 1937, he became an American citizen and was appointed associate professor. Kuiper became a full professor in 1943, and in 1947 Kuiper became the director of the Yerkes and McDonald Observatories. In 1960, he resigned from Yerkes Observatory and relocated to the University of Arizona in Tucson. Some of his best known discoveries during his tenure at the University of Chicago include: the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan in 1944, the carbon dioxide atmosphere of Mars in 1948, Uranus's satellite Miranda in 1948, and Neptune's satellite Nereid in 1949.
In 1960, Kuiper established the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (LPL), first as part of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics and later as a separate unit at the University of Arizona. In his years at LPL Kuiper established a group of telescopes in the Santa Catalina Mountains above Tucson; made balloon spectroscopic observations of the Earth's atmosphere; and conducted observatory site surveys in Hawaii, Mexico, and California. He was principal investigator on the NASA Ranger program, and as an experimenter on the Surveyor programs in the mid 1960s. Kuiper also served on numerous NASA Committees and Panels and briefed many high government officials on features of the space program. Kuiper died on a vacation trip in Mexico City on December 24, 1973.
Gerard P. Kuiper is considered by many to be the father of modern planetary science. In 1975, Kuiper was posthumously honored by NASA when the airborne infrared telescope was named the “Kuiper Airborne Observatory”. He was honored again in 1984 with the establishment of the Kuiper Prize by the American Astronomical Society Division of Planetary Science, and in 1992 when the Kuiper Belt was named after him.
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