The Masursky Memorial Entry

This blog is essentially named after my father, Harold Masursky, z''l, since it's his name that I proudly carry. This past August marked the 15th anniversary of his death, at age 67. He would have turned 83 this coming December, if he had lived. At the time of his death, I thought he was a ripe old age, but now that I am older myself, I can see how his life was tragically cut short. He was diagnosed with Type I diabetes at the age of 20 and lived with that cruel disease his entire adult life. Though he took care to eat right and exercise, and took insulin every day, his life expectancy was never more than mid-60s. He was a difficult man, brilliant and charismatic, but not really warm. He was married 5 times and had children with all but his last wife -- a complicated legacy to leave his children. But he was an inspiration to me and many others. He grew up poor in Ft Wayne, Indiana, first generation American, his parents were immigrants from Russia, orthodox Jews. He excelled in school and, improbably for his circumstances, went to Yale on a scholarship. My cousin says he was always referred to as "Uncle Harold Who Went to Yale," almost as if that was his name. He joined the army during WWII and served in the engineer corp in India, building bridges. After his service, he returned to Yale on the G.I. Bill to complete his Ph.D. in geology. He never received his degree, however. At his dissertation defense he was told to do a major rewrite. He walked away, as he already had a job with the U.S. Geological Survey. Years later, when I asked him, he claimed he did not regret his decision -- he said the lack of the degree never hurt his career, and would only have had an impact if he had wanted to pursue teaching. His first job was as a field geologist in Colorado, where he met my mother, and where my sister, Lisa, was born. He was invited to join the astro branch of the U.S.G.S., and they moved to Menlo Park, California, where I was born in 1962. While there, he worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory with Carl Sagan, among others. Shortly after my brother, Leo, was born (in 1966), we moved to Flagstaff, Arizona, where a new office had been built, partly to take advantage of the moon-like terrain in Northern Arizona (like Meteor and Sunset Craters -- http://www.meteorcrater.com/). He worked there until he retired, shortly before his death. He helped decide on the landing sites for the Moon mission in 1969 and analysed the data afterwards. He also helped to select landing sites on Mars for the Viking probes in 1975. He was involved in training astronauts during the Apollo program and was also a regular contributor to science exchanges with Russia (this during the Cold War!) He was also involved for many years in nomenclature -- on committees deciding names for the moons that orbit planets, and other heavenly bodies and features. When he died, a crater on Mars was named for him. He had believed strongly in the evidence for water on Mars; the crater chosen looks distinctly like water has run through it (http://www.marstoday.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=9431). The American Astronomical Society also created the Masursky Meritorius Service Award in his honor (http://www.aas.org/dps/prizes_masursky.html). If you Google "Masursky," you get a lot of hits on the award, because the first recipient was Carl Sagan and the award was mentioned in many of Sagan's obituaries. You also gets lots of hits for the many scientific papers he co-authored. My father also has an asteroid named for him (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2685_Masursky). As you can tell, these honors are very meaningful for me. My father was a scientist, not a celebrity like Sagan, but his contributions to space exploration and study were important and I am proud and gratified that his work has been honored in these ways.