Carruthers, George Richard,
1939-2020, African-American astrophysicist, b. Cincinnati,
OH, Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (BS, 1961; MS, nuclear
engineering, 1962; Ph.D., aeronautical and astronautical engineering, 1964).
Raised in rural Ohio, Carruthers showed an early interest in space and
astronomy, particularly after the family moved to Chicago in 1951. He attend
the Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he studied astrophysics.
After receiving his Ph.D., he was hired at the United States Naval Research
Laboratory, heading a team developing new types of telescopes for space
exploration. By the late ‘60s-early ‘70s, he was working for
the Apollo program, eventually developing a light-weight telescope, the Far
Ultraviolet Camera/Spectrograph, that was deployed on the moon during the
Apollo 16 mission (1972). Among his awards and honors were the 1973 Helen B.
Warner Prize for outstanding astronomer under age 35 from the American
Astronomical Society, the National Inventors’ Hall of Fame (2003),
and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation (2013); he was honored
at a special ceremony at NASA in 2016. He retired from the Naval Lab in
2002, but continued to teach part-time at Howard University until his death.
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2024, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Physics: Biographies
