H. John Wood, III

Howard John Wood, III 1938-2014 Dr. H. John Wood III, Astrophysicist and Astronomer, retired Optical Engineer at NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, died on Thursday in Annapolis, MD. He was 76. Born July 19, 1938 in Baltimore, MD to Howard John Wood, Jr. and Cara Loss Wood, he is survived by his wife, Dr. Maria Ilona Wood, their son Andreas M. Wood and his daughters by a previous marriage, Cara Wood Ginder and Erika Barton Wood. Dr. Wood grew up in Louisville, KY, graduated Louisville Country Day School in 1956, Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, PA in 1960, and earned his MA and PhD in Astronomy at Indiana University in 1964. He taught Astronomy at UVA in Charlottesville, VA and then in 1970 moved his family to Santiago, Chile to perform research with ESO, the European Southern Observatory. In 1976, Dr. Wood was a Fulbright Research fellow at the University of Vienna Observatory, returning to the United States in 1978 with his current wife and son, to teach Astronomy at Indiana University in Bloomington. He returned with his wife and son to Chile in 1981, this time working for the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in La Serena, then known as AURA, or the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy. The family came back to the United States in 1984 to settle finally in Bowie, Maryland when Dr. Wood took a post at NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center. Some of the significant achievements Dr. Wood was responsible for or participated in include the discovery of Balmer-Line variability of Ap stars, discovery of magnetic fields in southern Ap stars, alignment testing and delivery of the DIRBE photometric cryogenic telescope on the COBE spacecraft and alignment and optical prescription for Hubble Space Telescope while in orbit. Dr. Wood was an avid sailor, another past-time he pursued all his life, from his years sailing and boating on the Ohio River out of the Louisville Boat Club where he taught sailing for the club, to sailing the Chesapeake with his sailing partner Rai Aubrey, a colleague from NASA. During nearly 30 years of their association, Dr. Wood and Mr. Aubrey sailed, weather permitting, at least twice a week along with overnights on the weekends. In his later years, Dr. Wood performed outreach for NASA, giving lectures and presentations all over the United States for schools, professional groups and clubs, mostly about the story of the Hubble Telescope Repair he participated in, and about many aspects of the physics of space and how we've come to advance our understanding of our world and science itself with Astronomy. Those fortunate enough to attend one of his engaging presentations were always treated to plenty of "wow" moments and openings of the mind. Dr. Wood was a calm and clear explicator of often hard to grasp concepts, making them comprehensible even to the layperson. And when it came to those facts of our universe that are unapologetically mind-boggling, he conveyed that reality with a calm reassuring authority. Dr. Wood was a true scientist, a passionate, lifelong student of Astronomy, and an enthusiastic fan of optics and photography, vintage cars, sailing vessels, aircraft and rocketry, right to the end. He is survived by his wife, Dr. Maria Wood, his children, Cara Ginder, Erika Wood, both of New York and Andreas Wood of California and his grandchildren, Charlotte Ginder, Ronan Wood-Gallagher, Freya Wood-Gallagher, Auden Wood and Dylan Wood. All of whom are grateful for his gift to us of the universe itself. "Mortal as I am, I know that I am born for a day, but when I follow the serried multitude of the stars in their circular course, my feet no longer touch the earth; I ascend to Zeus himself to feast me on ambrosia, the food of the gods." Ptolemy