Re: [FPSPACE] A profile of Joe Veverka

Wed May 4 04:05:54 EDT 2005

For records (crude translation from Czech language of entry in the newly prepared Encyclopaedia of the Czech Republic):

Joseph Veverka (* June 8th, 1941, Pelhřimov [NB. letter r with diacritic sign looking as mall "v"]), Canadian astronomer living in the USA, head of Astronomy Dept. at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA. He left Czechoslovakia with parents after Communist coup in 1948. His field of work is planetology and comparative study of small bodies in Solar system, esp. planetary moons, asteroids and comets. He was co-investigator in many NASA's planetary missons, e.g. to the planet Mars and its moons Phobos and Deimos (Mariner 9, Viking 1, Viking 2, Mars Observer and Mars Global Surveyor), asteroid Gaspra (Galileo). He was team leader for landing the probe NEAR Shoemaker on asteroid Eros. Primary investegator for cometary probe Contour. Primary investigator for Imaging Science experiment for cometary probe Deep Impact.

Od (From): "LARRY KLAES" <ljk4 at msn.com>
Komu (To): "fpspace" <fpspace at friends-partners.org>
Kopie (Cc): "BioAstro" <bioastro at setileague.org>
Předmět (Subject): [FPSPACE] A profile of Joe Veverka
Datum (Date): 1. 5. 2005 6:44

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< http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/April05/Veverka_faculty_facets.html 
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< Life for Joe Veverka: the cosmos, cooking and bel canto 
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< ITHACA, N.Y. -- When Joe Veverka celebrated his 60th birthday in 2001, the Department of Astronomy came up with a novel gift: an open ticket to see any opera performance anywhere in the world. 
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< But before Veverka and his wife, astronomy researcher Ann Harch, could take advantage of the gift, both of their mothers fell ill. So it is only now that the couple is able to plan a visit to the Stadtoper, the State Opera House in Vienna, where many of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's operas were first performed. 
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< "Vienna is a nice place for opera, and it's a nice place to boot," said Veverka.
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< Veverka's love of opera began in the 1950s when he was a young man growing up in the small northern Canadian town of Cochrane, Ontario. In that time and remote location -- with the nearest town of any size more than 70 miles away -- his main source of entertainment was the radio. "I liked to listen to everything on the radio then, from the 'Lone Ranger' show to the Saturday afternoon broadcasts of opera performances from the Met," Veverka recalled. 
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< It was these broadcasts that began a lifelong interest in opera for the man who would one day become a professor of astronomy at Cornell, chairman of the Department of Astronomy and one of the world's leading experts on comets. 
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Mgr. Antonin Vitek, CSc.

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