Born Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, 19 June 1902
Died Englewood, New Jersey, USA, 24 August 1971
American celestial mechanician Wallace Eckert pioneered the application of punch-card computing machines to problems of astronomical orbit determinations. He was the son of farmers John and Anna (Née Heil) Eckert, and received degrees from Oberlin College (AB: 1925), Amherst College (AM: 1926), and Yale University (Ph.D. in astronomy: 1931, with a thesis on the orbit of Trojan-type minor planet (624) Hektor, completed under Ernest Brown ). From 1926 to 1940 Eckert served on the astronomy department faculty of Columbia University, rising to the level of professor of celestial mechanics. He spent his last 2 professional years, 1968–1969, at Yale University, and throughout his career was particularly generous in providing computational facilities for the astronomers at Yale University working on planetary, asteroid, and satellite orbits.
In 1933, Eckert worked on developing a punch-card...
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Selected References
Anon. (1979). “Eckert, Wallace John.” In National Cyclopedia of American Biography. Vol. 58, pp. 457–458. Clifton, New Jersey: James T. White and Co.
Ashbrook, Joseph (1971). “A Great American Astronomer.” Sky & Telescope 42, no. 4: 207.
Bowman, John S. (ed.) (1995). “Eckert, Wallace (John).” In The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, p. 213. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tropp, Henry S. (1978). “Eckert, Wallace John.” In Dictionary of Scientific Biography, edited by Charles Coulston Gillispie. Vol. 15, pp. 128–130. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
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Garfinkle, R.A. (2014). Eckert, Wallace John. In: Hockey, T., et al. Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9917-7_397
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