Fred Lawrence Whipple

Fred Lawrence Whipple (born November 5, 1906) is an American astronomer. Whipple coined the term "dirty snowball" as part of his now-confirmed theory of comet composition, which he wrote about in an influential paper in Astrophysical Journal in 1950. In 1955 he became director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO). In 1983 he won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society. In 1986 he was a Bruce Medalist, awarded by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and in 1987 he was awarded the Henry Norris Russell Lectureship by the American Astronomical Society. Asteroid 1940 Whipple is named after him, as is the Whipple Observatory on Mount Hopkins in Arizona.\n \nIn 1933, he discovered the periodic comet 36P/Whipple and the asteroid 1252 Celestia. {| border=1 cellpadding=5\n|+ Asteroids discovered: 1\n| 1252 Celestia || February 19 1933\n|} Whipple, Fred Lawrence