May/June 2008
Obituaries
Robert Jastrow ’44, Physicist, Space Expert and Professor
Robert Jastrow ’44, an energetic proponent of lunar exploration and former director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, died on February 8, 2008. He was 82 and lived in Arlington, Va.
An astronomer and science administrator who tried to explain science to a mass audience, Jastrow was born in 1925 in New York and earned an M.A. and a Ph.D. in physics, in 1945 and 1948, respectively, from GSAS. He became an assistant professor at Yale, then joined the Naval Research Laboratory. In 1958, Jastrow joined the newly formed National Aeronautics and Space Administration as head of its theoretical division. In 1961, he became director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, a unit of the Goddard Space Flight Center, and worked on Pioneer, Voyager and Galileo.
A public figure, prolific author and commentator on a range of topics, including the space program, astronomy, earth science and national security issues, Jastrow lectured on CBS and NBC, and his 1967 book, Red Giants and White Dwarfs: The Evolution of Stars, was a bestseller.
After 20 years as head of the Goddard Institute, in 1984 he helped found the George C. Marshall Institute, an organization that assesses scientific issues affecting public policy, in Washington, D.C. From 1992–2003, Jastrow was chairman of the Mount Wilson Institute, which runs the Mount Wilson Observatory in California, and was chairman emeritus of the Marshall Institute at the time of his death. In 1985, he published How to Make Nuclear Weapons Obsolete, supporting President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (“Star Wars”). He also became a prominent skeptic on climate change issues and wrote about the subject for the Marshall Institute.
Jastrow received the Arthur S. Flemming Award for Outstanding Service to the United States Government in 1964, the NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement in 1968 and the Columbia University Medal of Excellence in 1962. He was a past board member of the National Space Society. Jastrow taught at Columbia as an adjunct professor in the astronomy and geology departments from 1944–82; he also taught at Dartmouth. Jastrow enjoyed skiing and running. He was briefly married in 1967 to the former Ruth Witenberg and leaves no immediate survivors.