Six Moon Craters Named for Deaf Scientists

By Dr. Harry Lang

On a clear night, go outside and look at the moon. See the circles of darkness on its face? These cirles are craters. These craters are holes blasted into the surface of the moon by crashing meteors. The earth has craters too. On earth, most of the craters are hidden by trees and grasses. If someone tried to see the craters from space, they would be hidden by our atmosphere.

But on the moon, there is no vegetation and no atmosphere. From earth, we can see many craters, some of them almost as old as the moon itself.

Many of the craters are named after the earth’s most outstanding scientist, mathematicians, and inventors. Six of these outstanding people were Deaf.

Crater Tsiolkovsky, named after Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the scientist that the Russians called “Father of Rocketry,” is the largest crater named after a Deaf individual. Tsiolkovsky wrote hundreds of scientific books about space travel and rocketry. His home in Russia is now a museum.

Another crater is named after the French physicist, Charles de la Condamine. Condamine lived in the 1700’s and not much is known about him.

Two deaf women—Henrietta Swan Leavitt and Annie Jump Cannon—have craters named for them. They worked together at Harvard College Observatory in the 1900’s. Cannon classified over 300,000 stars. Leavitt was nominated for a Nobel Prize.

Another Deaf astronomer with a crater named for him is Robert Grant Aitken. Aitken discovered over two thousand binary stars. A Deaf British scientist, Oliver Heaviside, also has a crater named for him. Except for Cannon’s crater, all of the craters named after Deaf people are on the side of the moon that does not face the earth.

Apollo 13—a Shot of Crater Tsiolkovsky

Have you seen the movie Apollo 13? Apollo 13 tells the true story of an exciting adventure that almost became a tragedy. In the 1970’s, three American astronauts were almost stranded in space when their equipment failed. The astronauts—James Lovell, Fred Haise, and John Swigart—crawled into the lunar module and used it as their spacecraft to return to earth.

I kept track of their journey as it unfolded. The heroism and skill of the astronauts as well as the scientists and engineers on the ground were a special thrill for me. The movie provided a thrill, too, for it showed something that we on earth can never see—a crater on the dark side of the moon. As I watched, the three astronauts rounded the dark side of the moon, coming back to the side that faced the earth. There across the screen I saw one of the craters that is forever hidden from earthly view. The captions came across the screen, too.

“There’s Crater Tsiolkovsky!” cried one of the astronauts. My spirits rose at the sight of his name. I wished that the millions of other Americans moviegoers who heard or saw this knew that the Great Russian rocket scientist was Deaf. I sat back in my seat. In the movie, the American astronauts were on their way home.

Go to:

	Can Deaf People Succeed in Science? You Bet!
	Algol & Goodrick: A Demon Star and A Deaf Astronomer
	Deaf Inventors Bring Telephone to Deaf People
	The Nobel & the Deaf

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