Eugene Merle Shoemaker
Shoemaker, Eugene Merle (1928-1997) was an American scientist. He made valuable contributions in the fields of geology, the study of how the planet earth was formed and how it changes, and astronomy, the study of the universe and the objects in it.
Shoemaker was born on April 28, 1928, in Los Angeles. He received a B.S. degree in 1947 and an M.S. degree in 1948, both in geology, from the California Institute of Technology.
In 1948, Shoemaker accepted a position as a junior geologist with the United States Geological Survey (USGS). He became a senior geologist in 1949. Although he took several leaves of absence, he remained employed by the USGS until he retired in 1993.
In August 1951, Shoemaker married Carolyn Spellman. They had three children.
Shoemaker received an M.A. degree in 1954 and a Ph.D. degree in 1960 from Princeton University. In the 1960's, he helped create maps of the moon's surface in anticipation of future spacecraft landings there. From 1962 to 1985, Shoemaker taught geology at the California Institute of Technology.
In the early 1970's, Shoemaker began a survey to find asteroids (small planetary bodies that orbit the sun). His wife Carolyn Shoemaker later joined him in this work, and they added comets (objects made of ice and rocky dust particles) to their search. In March 1993, at the Palomar Observatory near San Diego, the Shoemakers and the astronomer David H. Levy together discovered a comet in orbit around Jupiter. This comet, which became known as Shoemaker-Levy 9, crashed into Jupiter's atmosphere in July 1994.
On July 18, 1997, the Shoemakers were involved in an automobile accident near Alice Springs, Australia. Shoemaker was killed and his wife injured. Shoemaker's body was cremated, and the ashes were left on the moon by the Lunar Prospector in 1999.