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From: RSchatte@aol.com
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 1997 22:16:47 -0400 (EDT)
Fwd Date: Fri, 18 Jul 1997 22:51:42 -0400
Subject: Comet Discoverer Shoemaker Dies


---------------------
Forwarded message:
Subj:    Comet Discoverer Shoemaker Dies
Date:    97-07-18 21:25:46 EDT
From:    AOL News

.c The Associated Press

      By MATT KELLEY
      PHOENIX (AP) - Astronomer Eugene Shoemaker, who co-discovered
the comet that slammed into Jupiter in 1994, was killed in a car
accident Friday in Australia during an annual trip to search for
asteroid craters. He was 69.

      Shoemaker died in a two-car accident near Alice Springs,
Australia, said Edward Bowell, a fellow astronomer at Lowell
Observatory in Flagstaff. His wife, Carolyn, another Lowell
Observatory astronomer who shared in the Jupiter comet's discovery,
was injured, Bowell said.

      Shoemaker was perhaps best known for helping to discover comet
Shoemaker-Levy 9, which broke up and spectacularly slammed into the
giant, gaseous planet in 1994. Amateur astronomer David Levy was
also on the team.

      A geologist by training, Shoemaker was also a leading expert on
craters and the interplanetary collisions that caused them. He
lived just a short drive from Arizona's famous Meteor Crater and
first proved to the scientific community that it was indeed the
result of an asteroid, said University of Arizona planetary
scientist Larry Lebofsky.

      The Shoemakers had been in Australia for about two weeks on an
annual trip to search for asteroid impact craters in the outback,
Bowell said.

      Bowell said Shoemaker ``more or less single-handedly created the
field of impacts ... and he was the one who started bringing to
other scientists' and the public's attention the danger of the
impacts of comets and asteroids on the Earth.''

      Shoemaker founded the U.S. Geological Survey's Center of
Astrogeology in Flagstaff in the early 1960s and served as the
center's chief scientist. He also taught at the California
Institute of Technology from 1969 to 1989.

      ``Any area he went into, his contributions stood in mammoth
proportion above the rest of us mortals,'' said Laurence Soderblom,
a college of Shoemaker's who is working on the Mars Pathfinder
mission. ``No one else has the natural ability to see into a
complex problem and dissect it with the clarity of Gene
Shoemaker.''

      Shoemaker also was involved in several U.S. space missions,
including the Apollo missions to the moon - he taught the
astronauts about craters before they left Earth. Shoemaker had
wanted to be an astronaut but was rejected because of a medical
problem, Bowell said.

      ``I think that was the greatest disappointment of his life, that
he failed to be standing on the moon with his geological hammer
tapping on the rocks,'' Bowell said.

      In an interview last year, Shoemaker said he hoped for more
manned space missions soon - to nearby asteroids, if not to the
planet Mars.

      ``I don't think I will live long enough to see us get to Mars,''
Shoemaker said.

      AP-NY-07-18-97 2118EDT
Copyright 1997 The
Associated Press.  The information
contained in the AP news report may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without
prior written authority of The Associated Press.