National Academy of Engineering - "The Mother of Landsat" Virginia Tower Norwood Has Passed Away

 

 

VIRGINIA NORWOOD OBITUARY, AMERICAN PHYSICIST “MOTHER OF LANDSAT” HAS PASSED AWAY

 

Virginia Tower Norwood (January 8, 1927 – March 26, 2023) was an American aerospace engineer, inventor, and physicist.  She was best known for her contribution to the Landsat program,  having designed the Multispectral Scanner  which was first used on Landsat 1. She has been called "The Mother of Landsat" for this work.

Early life and education

Virginia Tower was born on January 8, 1927, at Fort Totten in New York City, the eldest daughter of Eleanor Monroe and John Vogler Tower.  He was an Army officer, had a master's degree in physics, and later taught at Carnegie Tech. Her mother was skilled in mathematics and languages and studied independently.  Her father actively encouraged young Virginia's interest in physics and mathematics; he gave her a slide ruler when she was nine years old, and helped to develop her mathematical skills. The family moved around with her father's military career, living in Panama, Oklahoma, and Bermuda. Once military families were sent back to the American mainland following the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, she was a pupil at five high schools. In 1943, her guidance counselor in high school suggested she become a librarian due to her intelligence, but she was much more interested in numbers than words.

 

Norwood was accepted into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a partial scholarship in 1944.  She was graduated in 1947 with a degree in mathematical physics.

 

While working at the United States Army Signal Corps in New Jersey, she took engineering classes through a Rutgers University extension programme.

 

Career

A year after graduation from MIT she was hired by the U.S. Army Signal Corps Laboratories in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. She began working on weather radar. While there, she designed a radar reflector for weather balloons before progressing to work on microwave antenna design.

 

After five years at the Signal Corps she moved to Los Angeles and began working for Hughes Aircraft Company. She worked there for 36 years on a range of projects that included antenna design, communications links, optics, and the Landsat scanners. During that period she designed the microwave transmitter that Surveyor 1 used to transmit data and images back to earth.

 

Norwood designed a six-band multispectral scanner for use on the first Landsat mission. Due to mission constraints the prototype was revised to use only four bands. The Multispectral Scanner, as it was known, was carried on Landsat 1. An improved seven band version, known as the Thematic Mapper was later included on Landsat 4.

Norwood retired in 1989.  A biographical article published by NASA in 2020 referred to her as "The Mother of Landsat".

Patents

Norwood filed and held three patents. Two of them are a radar reflector designed to track weather balloons and a novel folded tracking antenna.

• US patent 2746035A, Virginia T Norwood, "Radar reflector", issued 1956-05-15
• US patent 3143737A, Virginia T Norwood, "Folded sigma-shaped dipole antenna", issued 1964-08-04

 

Awards

In 1979, Norwood received the William T. Pecora Award. The award recognizes achievements in the scientific and technical remote sensing community, as well as contributions leading to successful practical applications of remote sensing. The award is sponsored jointly by the U.S. Department of the Interior and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

 

In 2021, Norwood was given an Honorary Lifetime Achievement Award  by the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, the highest honour that society bestows on any individual.

 

Norwood was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in February 2023.

 

Personal life

Virginia Tower married Lawrence Russell Norwood, her third-semester calculus instructor and the president of the MIT mathematics club. They married on the day after she completed her bachelor's degree in mathematics. They had three children before divorcing. She went on to marry Maurice Schaeffer (d. 2010).

 

Norwood died at her home in Topanga, California, on March 26, 2023, at age 96.

 

 

 

The woman who brought us the world

 

MIT Technology Review

A half-century ago, Virginia Tower Norwood ’47 invented the first multispectral scanner to image Earth from space. Landsat 1 and its successors have been scanning the planet continuously ever since.

By  Alice Dragoon

June 29, 2021

 

Landsat’s image of Mount St. Helens after its 1980 eruption. And Norwood, 94, makes a daily tally of bird species.

MICHELLE GROSKOPF (NORWOOD); USGS/NASA LANDSAT

 

 

 

Virginia Norwood, pioneered Earth imagery as ‘Mother of Landsat,’ dies at 96

washingtonpost

 

 

 

Norwood and Labor Secretary James Hodgson discuss how Landsat’s multispectral scanner works at a conference in 1972.

 

Virginia Norwood, left, and Labor Secretary James Hodgson discuss Landsat designs in 1972. Norwood, who was integral to the design of the satellite technology, died March 26 at 96. (Harry J. Weiner/Department of Health, Education and Welfare)

 

 

Multispectral scanner image of Yosemite Half Dome - collection of Virginia Tower Norwood

 

A test version of Norwood’s multispectral scanner captured this false-color image of Half Dome from a truck two months before Landsat 1’s launch.

COURTESY OF NASA

 

 

Virginia Norwood, 95, holding the USGS John Wesley Powell award on March 14, 2022. Photo credit: Naomi Norwood

 

FUENTE DE LA IMAGEN,NAOMI NORWOOD

Pie de foto,

Norwood en la actualidad. En sus manos está el galardón que la Sociedad Estadounidense de Fotogrametría y Teledetección, ASPRS, le concedió en 2021 en reconocimiento de sus logros.

 

Norwood today. In her hands is the award that the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, ASPRS, awarded her in 2021 in recognition of her  achievements.