Meet: H. John Wood

Astronomer

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Dr. H. John Wood is an astronomer and serves as an optical engineer for the Optics Branch at Goddard Space Flight Center. Since June 1990, he has been Optics Lead Engineer on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Project. He led the team which successfully determined the prescription of HST while on orbit. He then led NASA's effort to develop and test the corrective optics for HST. In addition to his work on Hubble, he currently manages the Instrument Synthesis & Analysis Laboratory for new instrument engineering design at Goddard.

A graduate of Swarthmore College, Dr. Wood earned the M.A. and Ph.D. in Astronomy from Indiana University. He has been at Goddard Space Flight Center for 16 years. In addition to the Hubble Project, he has been Lead Optical Engineer on other Goddard projects: the Mars Observer Laser Altimeter and the Diffuse Infrared Background Experiment aboard the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE). Earlier he was assistant to the director at Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory (Chile) for two years. He held a Fulbright Research Fellowship for two years at the University Observatory in Vienna, Austria. He also served five years as a staff astronomer at the European Southern Observatory in Chile. His career began with six years on the astronomy faculty of the University of Virginia at Charlottesville.

Winner of the 1992 NASA exceptional service medal and the 1994 NASA exceptional achievement medal for his work on COBE and HST, he is the author of 50 research papers in astronomy and space optics. He was invited to edit special editions of Applied Optics and Optics and Photonics News on the HST first servicing mission. He was co-chair of the HST Independent Optical Review Panel which was charged with the determination of the optical parameters for the HST while on orbit.

Dr. Wood currently serves as the Chair of the Optical Technology Division of the Optical Society of America. Although his career has comprised astronomical research as well as the building and testing of scientific instruments, Dr. Wood has given talks and presentations to thousands of elementary and middle school students and their teachers. He has been technical officer and science editor on the "PCs in Space" software development program of Jackson & Tull. This interactive software enables children in grades 3 - 9 to learn about Astronomy, Physics, Mathematics, Geology and Earth Science using images from orbiting satellites.