James Richard Houck (October 5, 1940 – September 18, 2015) was the Kenneth A. Wallace Professor of Astronomy at Cornell University. Houck pioneered infrared observational astronomy, designing detectors and spectrographs that were flown on sounding rockets in the 1960s, on airborne observatories in the 1970s, and the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) in 1984 and the

Spitzer Space Telescope The Spitzer Space Telescope, formerly the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF), was an infrared space telescope launched in 2003. Operations ended on 30 January 2020. Spitzer was the third space telescope dedicated to infrared astronomy, f ...

in 2003. He also led development of Cornell's instrumentation for the

Palomar Observatory Palomar Observatory is an astronomical research observatory in San Diego County, California, United States, in the Palomar Mountain Range. It is owned and operated by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Research time at the observat ...

Hale Telescope. Houck's research outside instrumentation has focused on the mechanisms responsible for energy generation in

Ultraluminous Infrared Galaxies Luminous infrared galaxies or LIRGs are galaxies with luminosities, the measurement of brightness, above . They are also referred to as submillimeter galaxies (SMGs) through their normal method of detection. LIRGs are more abundant than starburst g ...

(ULIRGs), of which he was a discoverer using the IRAS satellite. Houck has also studied the formation of dust in the early Universe. Houck was a member of the Cornell University Senate and served as the designer and founding director of the

Hartung–Boothroyd Observatory The Hartung–Boothroyd Observatory (HBO) is located atop Mount Pleasant near the Cornell University in Ithaca, New York (US). It is used mainly as a teaching facility for upper-level undergraduate astronomy classes. The observatory is named to r ...

. He was married to Elaine Vezzani, with whom he had two children, until her death in 2011. Houck is buried at Lake View Cemetery in Ithaca, New York.

Honors

* NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal (1984) "for outstanding contributions to IRAS, including efforts in the rebuilding of the telescope focal plane assembly and continuing scientific analysis." * NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal (2005) "for his work on the

infrared spectrograph." *

Joseph Weber Award for Astronomical Instrumentation The Joseph Weber Award for Astronomical Instrumentation is awarded by the American Astronomical Society to an individual for the design, invention or significant improvement of instrumentation leading to advances in astronomy. It is named after phy ...

(2008) "for his extraordinary contributions over nearly four decades to major instrumentation for infrared astronomy."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Houck, James R. 1940 births 2015 deaths Cornell University faculty American astrophysicists Carnegie Mellon University alumni Cornell University alumni People from Mobile, Alabama:)