 1906 - 2004 (97 years) Submit Photo / Document
Has 44 ancestors and 5 descendants in this family tree.
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| Name |
Fred Lawrence Whipple |
| Birth |
5 Nov 1906 |
Red Oak, Montgomery, Iowa, United States  |
| Gender |
Male |
| Death |
30 Aug 2004 |
Cambridge, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States |
| Initiatory (LDS) |
9 Mar 2012 |
JRIVE |
| FamilySearch ID |
LZDC-3CW |
| Burial |
Cambridge, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States |
| Headstones |
 Submit Headstone Photo |
| Person ID |
I77892 |
mytree |
| Last Modified |
25 Feb 2024 |
| Father |
Harry Lawrence Whipple, b. 26 Sep 1882, Union Township, Harrison, Missouri, United States d. 28 Nov 1963, Long Beach, Los Angeles, California, United States (Age 81 years) |
| Mother |
Celestia "Lesta" McFarland, b. 11 Sep 1884, Garfield Township, Montgomery, Iowa, United States d. 2 Jan 1972, Long Beach, Los Angeles, California, United States (Age 87 years) |
| Marriage |
28 Dec 1905 |
San Luis Obispo, California, United States |
| Family ID |
F26919 |
Group Sheet | Family Chart |
| Family 1 |
Dorothy Cornell Woods, b. Abt 1907, California, United States d. Abt 1938 (Age 31 years) |
| Marriage |
7 Jul 1928 |
Los Angeles, California, United States |
| Children |
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| Family ID |
F26917 |
Group Sheet | Family Chart |
| Last Modified |
5 May 2024 |
| Family 2 |
Babette Frances "Babbie" Samelson, b. 22 Jul 1918, Memphis, Shelby, Tennessee, United States d. 18 Dec 2009, Belmont, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States (Age 91 years) |
| Marriage |
20 Aug 1946 |
Cambridge, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States |
| Children |
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| Family ID |
F26918 |
Group Sheet | Family Chart |
| Last Modified |
5 May 2024 |
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| Event Map |
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 | Birth - 5 Nov 1906 - Red Oak, Montgomery, Iowa, United States |
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 | Marriage - 7 Jul 1928 - Los Angeles, California, United States |
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 | Marriage - 20 Aug 1946 - Cambridge, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States |
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| Death - 30 Aug 2004 - Cambridge, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States |
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 | Initiatory (LDS) - 9 Mar 2012 - JRIVE |
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| Burial - - Cambridge, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States |
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| Notes |
- Dr. Fred Lawrence Whipple, was one of the last giants of 20th century as t ronomy. He was Phillips Professor of Astronomy Emeritus at Harvard Univ er sity and a Senior Physicist at SAO.
A discoverer of six comets, Whipple may be best known for his comet rese a rch. Five decades ago, he first suggested that comets were "icy conglom er ates," what the press called "dirty snowballs." His dirty snowball the or y caught the imagination of the public even as it revolutionized come t sc ience. A 2003 survey by The Astrophysical Journal showed that Whippl e's 1 950 and 1951 scientific papers on the "icy conglomerate" model wer e the m ost cited papers in past 50 years. Whipple's comet work continue d for a l ifetime. In 1999, he was named to work on NASA's Contour missio n, becomin g the oldest researcher ever to accept such a post.
Never one to limit his work to one area of research, Whipple also contri b uted to more earthly challenges. During World War II, Whipple co-invent e d a cutting device that converted lumps of tinfoil into thousands of fr ag ments known as chaff. Allied aircraft would release chaff to confuse e nem y radar. Whipple was particularly proud of this invention, for whic h Pres ident Truman awarded him a Certificate of Merit in 1948.
Whipple also strongly influenced the early era of spaceflight. Mindfu l o f the damage to spacecraft from meteors, in 1946 he invented the Mete or B umper, a thin outer skin of metal. Also known as the Whipple Shield , thi s mechanism explodes a meteor on contact, preventing the spacecraf t fro m receiving catastrophic damage. Improved versions of it are stil l in us e today.
Whipple and a handful of other scientists had the foresight to envisio n t he era of artificial satellites. Only Whipple had both the imaginatio n an d the managerial skill to organize a worldwide network of amateur as trono mers to track these then hypothetical objects and to determine thei r orbi ts. When Sputnik I was successfully launched on 4 October 1957, Wh ipple' s group was the only one prepared. Cambridge fast became a nerve c enter o f the earliest part of the space age. Whipple and some of his sta ff wer e even featured on the cover of Life magazine for their satellit e trackin g prowess.
Later, also under his leadership, SAO developed an optical tracking syst e m for satellites using a network of Baker-Nunn cameras. That network ac hi eved spectacular success. "It tracked satellites so well that astronom er s were able to determine the exact shape of the Earth from its gravita tio nal effects on satellite orbits," says Dr. Myron Lecar of SAO.
For his work on the network, Whipple received from President John F. Ken n edy in 1963 the Distinguished Federal Civilian Service award. "I thin k th at was my most exciting moment, when I was able to invite my parent s an d my family to the Rose Garden for the award ceremony," Whipple sai d i n a 2001 interview.
Born in Red Oak, Iowa, on November 5, 1906, Whipple studied at Occident a l College and earned his undergraduate degree in mathematics at the Uni ve rsity of California at Los Angeles, prior to moving to Berkeley to obt ai n his Ph.D. degree in 1931. He then moved to Harvard College Observato r y in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Whipple directed the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) from 19 5 5 to 1973, before it joined with the Harvard College Observatory to fo r m the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).
In the late 1960s, Whipple selected Mount Hopkins in southern Arizon a a s the site for a new SAO astronomical facility. Whipple was part of t he g roup that initiated a novel and low-cost approach to building larg e teles copes first realized in the construction of the Multiple Mirror T elescope , a joint project of SAO and the University of Arizona. Mt. Hopk ins Obser vatory was renamed Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory in 1981.
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Has 44 ancestors and 5 descendants in this family tree.
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