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THE ASTRONOMER Electronic Circular No 1213      1997 Jul 19 12.50UT
Ed:Guy M Hurst, 16,Westminster Close, Kempshott Rise,  Basingstoke,
Hants, RG22 4PP,England.Telephone/FAX(01256)471074Int:+441256471074
INTERNET: GUY@TAHQ.DEMON.CO.UK             GMH at AST.STAR.RL.AC.UK
WORLD WIDE WEB                    http://www.demon.co.uk/astronomer
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                 *    EUGENE SHOEMAKER (1928-1997)    *
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Word has been received from John Mason, Chris Spratt and via
various newsgroups of the death of Eugene Shoemaker.

Sky & Telescope has posted this initial announcement:

The world has lost one of its most renowned scientists with the
death of Eugene Shoemaker at age 69.  On the afternoon of July 18,
Gene and his wife, Carolyn, were involved in a car accident in
central Australia.  He was fatally injured; Carolyn suffered broken
ribs but is expected to recover.  The pair had arrived in Australia
just six days before to study some of the continent's numerous
impact craters -- an annual trek Down Under that they'd made a
habit in recent years.

Best known for his pioneering work in elucidating the mechanics of
impacts and in the discovery of Earth-crossing bodies, Gene gained
worldwide fame in March 1993 for his discovery, with Carolyn and
colleague David Levy, of a comet that would strike Jupiter 16
months later. Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 was just one of the finds that
made this husband-wife team the leading comet discoverers of this
century. They are also credited with discovering more than 800
asteroids. But the one research interest he never tired of was
Meteor Crater, the kilometre-wide pit east of Flagstaff, Arizona.

While still in his teens, Gene realized that someday astronauts
would walk on the Moon, and from that point forward his whole
professional life would be directed toward becoming one of them.
But a medical condition prevented him from ever being selected
for the Apollo program.  "Not going to the Moon and banging on
it with my own hammer has been the biggest disappointment in
life," he said last year. "But then, I probably wouldn't have
gone to Palomar Observatory to take some 25,000 films of the night
sky with Carolyn -- she scanned them all -- and we wouldn't have
had the thrills of finding those funny things that go bump in the
night."

Guy M Hurst