George Carruthers, Space Scientist

1972

Dr. George Carruthers (1939-2020) was an award winning scientist, inventor and astronomer whose work lives on the moon today. Carruthers designed and built a gold-plated ultraviolet camera/spectrograph, the first moon-based observatory placed in April 1972. The telescope is located on the moon’s Descartes highland region, still standing decades later. Carruthers was deeply committed to education, launching programs for high school students to research at the Naval Research Laboratory and teaching at Howard University in Washington, D.C.