Wallace John Eckert
Wallace John Eckert (born June 19, 1902 in Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania , † August 24, 1971 in Englewood , New Jersey ) was an American astronomer and pioneer of scientific computing with computers, especially in astronomy.
Eckert studied at Columbia University and the University of Chicago and received his PhD in astronomy from Yale University in 1931 with Ernest William Brown . From 1926 to 1970 he was professor of astronomy at Columbia University, where he was director of the Thomas J. Watson Astronomical Computing Bureau , which he founded in 1937, where celestial mechanical calculations (determining the orbit of planets, comets) were carried out with punched card computers. The laboratory was supported by Thomas J. Watson from IBM , then a manufacturer of punched card machines. In the 1940s, the methods were also used in the Manhattan Project , where Richard Feynman previously carried out the extensive numerical calculations with a whole group of operators on desktop calculating machines. From 1940 to 1945 he was director of the US Naval Observatory Nautical Almanac Office . From 1945 he was the founder and director of the Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory at Columbia University. There and at the same time as a senior scientist at IBM, he led the development of the SSEC (IBM Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator). As early as 1946 he gave courses at Columbia University in scientific computing with computers. The IBM 610 "desktop calculator" was also developed in his laboratory from 1948 onwards. His book from 1940 is considered the first book on scientific computing with computers.
Together with his wife Dorothy A. Eckert he created the first computer numerically implementable motion model of the moon ( Hill – Brown – Eckert theory). Eckert was also responsible for calculating the orbit of the moon as part of the Apollo moon landing program , an area for which he was therefore considered the leading authority (like his teacher Brown before).
In 1967 he retired from Columbia University.
In 1966 he received the James Craig Watson Medal from the National Academy of Sciences (an award in astronomy). The asteroid (1750) Eckert and the lunar crater Eckert are named after him.
He is not related to the computer pioneer John Presper Eckert .
Fonts
- Punched card methods in scientific computation, 1940, reprint at MIT Press 1984
- with DA Eckert: The literal solution of the main problem of the lunar theory . In: Astronomical Journal , Vol. 72 (1967), pp. 1299 ff ( text in SAO / NASA Astrophysics Data System ADS).
Web links
- Portrait on Columbia University's History of Computing website
- Estate at the Charles Babbage Institute
- Publications by WJ Eckert in the Astrophysics Data System
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Eckert, Wallace John |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American astronomer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 19, 1902 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 24, 1971 |
| Place of death | Englewood , New Jersey |