Clyde Tombaugh (1906-1997)

Clyde Tombaugh, an amateur astronomer from rural Kansas, earned a position at Lowell Observatory in Arizona in 1929 through his home-built optics and skill despite lacking a college degree, and there in 1930 he discovered Pluto. During World War II, while still at Lowell, he was exempted from the draft by becoming an instructor and taught navigation to Navy pilots from 1943 to 1944. After briefly teaching at UCLA as a visiting professor, he accepted a position at the University of New Mexico in 1946 but changed course after Dr. James Edson invited him to observe a V-2 rocket firing at White Sands Missile Range and to help make a new tracking telescope fully functional. Tombaugh then spent nine years at White Sands Missile Range, where he applied his knowledge of astronomy and photography to the developing field of rocketry, served as Chief of the Optical Measurements Section under the Army's Ballistic Research Lab Headquarters, and in 1951 became Director of the Flight Determination Lab. His work included creating the tracking telescope program there, selecting instrument placement locations across the range for the most useful data, and improving focal lengths and film exposures; the sixteen-inch Type IV tracking telescope was among the first five models designed with his recommendations, and the Intercept Ground Optical Recorder later became the most successful and widely used tracking telescope at the range in the early 1960s. In 1955 he left White Sands Missile Range to continue the Army project Search for Small Earth Satellites, which he moved to the Physical Science Laboratory of New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, and that work showed near-earth space was free of damaging debris, helping prepare for planned satellite launches. He later became a full-time professor, established the university's astronomy program, cofounded the Las Cruces Astronomical Society, retired from teaching in 1973, and remained a Las Cruces resident until his death in 1997.

White Sands, New Mexico · United States