Marcus Driver O'Day (1897–1961) was an American

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate caus ...

. In 1918, he entered the military service in

Eugene, Oregon Eugene ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Oregon. It is located at the southern end of the Willamette Valley, near the confluence of the McKenzie and Willamette rivers, about east of the Oregon Coast. As of the 2020 United States Census, Eu ...

after graduating from

Centralia, Washington Centralia () is a city in Lewis County, Washington, United States. It is located along Interstate 5 near the midpoint between Seattle and Portland, Oregon. The city had a population of 18,183 at the 2020 census. Centralia is twinned with Cheh ...

. He then attended the University of Oregon where he was assigned to the Students Army Training Corps, and was discharged at the end of the year. Beginning in 1926 O'Day taught physics at

Reed College Reed College is a private liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus in the Eastmoreland neighborhood, with Tudor-Gothic style architecture, and a forested canyon nature preserve at ...

. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, he was employed at the MIT Radiation Laboratory where he worked on the

radar Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance (''ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, w ...

IFF In logic and related fields such as mathematics and philosophy, "if and only if" (shortened as "iff") is a biconditional logical connective between statements, where either both statements are true or both are false. The connective is bicon ...

system. In 1945 he joined the Air Force Cambridge Research Labs. In 1946 and 1947 he guided a team named the Blossom research group, that worked to launch scientific payloads into the

ionosphere The ionosphere () is the ionized part of the upper atmosphere of Earth, from about to above sea level, a region that includes the thermosphere and parts of the mesosphere and exosphere. The ionosphere is ionized by solar radiation. It plays an ...

using

V-2 The V-2 (german: Vergeltungswaffe 2, lit=Retaliation Weapon 2), with the technical name ''Aggregat 4'' (A-4), was the world’s first long-range guided ballistic missile. The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was developed ...

rockets that had been brought to the United States from

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

following the war. He was also a member of the Rocket and Satellite Research Panel until it ceased operating in 1960. He would theorize in 1958 that

solar power Solar power is the conversion of energy from sunlight into electricity, either directly using photovoltaics (PV) or indirectly using concentrated solar power. Photovoltaic cells convert light into an electric current using the photovoltaic e ...

could be used to sustain a colony on the Moon, and hypothesized that there may be water under the lunar surface. The crater

O'Day O'Day is a surname of Irish origin. Notable people with the surname include: *Alan O'Day (1940–2013), American singer-songwriter *Anita O'Day (1919–2006), American jazz singer *Aubrey O'Day (born 1984), American singer, dancer, actress, songwr ...

on the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

is named after him, as is the "Marcus D. O'Day award".

Bibliography

* M.D. O'Day and A.A. Knowlton, "Laboratory Manual in Physics", 1935, New York, McGraw-Hill. * Marcus O'Day, Watson Laboratories, "Rocketbourne Upper Atmospheric Experiments of the Air Materiel Command", American Physical Society, SE Section, 1949. 1897 births 1961 deaths People from Centralia, Washington 20th-century American physicists Fellows of the American Physical Society University of Oregon alumni Reed College faculty Massachusetts Institute of Technology staff {{US-physicist-stub