Gerard O'Neill
Gerard Kitchen O'Neill (February 6 1927 - April 27 1992) was a U.S. physicist and space pioneer.
Born in Brooklyn, he graduated from Swarthmore College in 1950, and received a doctorate in physics from Cornell University in 1954. He joined the faculty of Princeton University in 1954, with which he remained associated until his death. Dr. O'Neill's early research focused on high-energy particle physics; notably he invented the particle storage ring.
While lecturing to a freshman physics class at Princeton University in 1969, O'Neill (an avid pilot and a scientist-astronaut candidate during Apollo) posed the question to his students: "Is the surface of a planet really the right place for an expanding technological civilization?" There are sound reasons why the answer appears to be no. Also during his time at Princeton, O'Neill researched and proposed the idea of the O'Neill Cylinder.
A small conference on space colonization was funded by Stewart Brand's Point Foundation in May, 1974. Among others who attended was Eric Drexler, at the time a freshman at MIT. A highly influential article by O'Neill based on his work and his students, "The Colonization of Space", appeared in a September 1974 issue of Physics Today. A much larger conference on Space Manufacturing Facilities was held in May 1975. Many of the people who became post Apollo era space activists attended. In September 1975, the L5 Society was founded to develop public support for O'Neill's ideas for space colonies.
In 1977 O'Neill founded the Space Studies Institute at Princeton University, an organization that continues today to fund research in space manufacturing and resources. He also worked on mass drivers for space propulsion, research and design concepts for space stations, Space colonization, solar power satellites, and lunar and asteroid mining. He authored the book The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space which inspired a generation of space exploration advocates.
O'Neill founded O'Neill Communications in Princeton in 1988. The company was a pioneer in the area of wireless computer networking via radio frequencies, creating and marketing the LAWN, or Local Area Wireless Networking, system.
One of the supporters of O'Neill's ideas was Rick Tumlinson, who worked under O'Neill at the Space Studies Institute. Tumlinson would later go on to co-found the Space Frontier Foundation in 1988; to this day, the Foundation supports O'Neill's concepts of large-scale space colonization.
O'Neill died after a seven year fight against leukemia. A sample of his ashes were buried in space on April 21, 1997.
See also
- Mining the Sky: Untold Riches from the Asteroids, Comets, and Planets by John S. Lewis
- The Millennial Project by Marshall Savage
- The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must by Robert Zubrin
- Engines of Creation by K. Eric Drexler
References
- O'Neill, Gerard K. (1977). The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space. William Morrow & Company. ISBN 0-9622379-0-6.
- O'Neill, Gerard K. (1977). Space-Based Manufacturing from Nonterrestrial Materials. Amer Inst of Aeronautics. ISBN 0-915928-21-3.
- O'Neill, Gerard K. (1981). 2081: A Hopeful View of the Human Future. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-671-44751-3.
- O'Neill, Gerard K. (1983). The Technology Edge: Opportunities for America in world competition. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-671-55437-9.
External links
- Space Studies Institute
- 1984 Interview with O'Neill
- "The Colonization of Space", Physics Today, Sept. 1974.
- "Is the surface of a planet really the right place for an expanding technological civilization?", Gerard O'Neill interview by Stewart Brand
- Biography of Rick Tumlinson, O'Neill's disciple
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | O'Neill, Gerard Kitchen |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | Physicist and astronomer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1927 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Brooklyn, New York City, U.S. |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 27, 1992 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | |
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