Family[edit]
While Shoemaker was attending Caltech, his roommate was Richard Spellman, a young man
from Chico, California. Although Shoemaker had already enrolled in a doctoral program at Princeton
University, he returned to California to serve as best man at Richard's wedding in 1950. He met
Richard's sister, Carolyn, for the first time on that occasion. Carolyn was born in Gallup, New
Mexico, in 1929, but the Spellman family moved to Chico soon afterward. Carolyn earned degrees
from Chico State College in history and political science. She never exhibited an interest in scientific
subjects while growing up, and took one geology course in college, which she found boring.
Nevertheless, the couple kept in touch while Shoemaker spent the next year in Princeton, followed
by a two-week vacation touring the Colorado Plateau. She reportedly told others that listening to
Shoemaker explain geology turned a boring subject into an exciting and interesting pursuit of
knowledge.[citation needed] The couple married on August 17, 1951.[10]
The Shoemakers had three children: two daughters and one son. Carolyn saw her work as keeping
house and raising the children especially after they settled in Flagstaff in the 1960s. She had tried
teaching school before they married, but found the work unsatisfying. She also traveled sometimes
with Gene, but stopped after she noticed that her absence affected the children. After their children
were grown, Carolyn wanted something meaningful to combat the "empty nest" feeling. By then,
Gene suggested that she take up astronomy and join his team looking for asteroids approaching
Earth. A student working at Lowell Observatory commenced teaching her astronomy. She showed
great potential and launched her career as a planetary astronomer at age 51. She continues the
work to the present.[10]
Scientific contributions[edit]
Eugene Shoemaker wearing a Bell Rocket Belt while training astronauts.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) hired Shoemaker in 1950, and he maintained an
association with the organisation for the rest of his career. [9] His first assignment was to search for
uranium deposits in Utah and Colorado. His next mission was to study volcanic processes, since
other investigators had already noticed that uranium deposits were often located in the vents of
ancient volcanoes. This study led him to explore the Hopi Buttes of Northern Arizona, which
happened to be near Meteor Crater.[9]
Daniel Barringer, an entrepreneur and mining engineer who had discovered Meteor Crater in 1891,
had postulated that it had been caused by the impact of a meteor. About the same time, G. K.
Gilbert, the chief geologist of the USGS, examined the crater and announced that it had been
created by an explosive venting of volcanic steam. A majority of scientists accepted Gilbert's
explanation of the cause of the crater, and it remained the conventional wisdom until Shoemaker's
investigations half a century later. [9]
Astrogeology and Apollo[edit]
Shoemaker training astronauts at Brooks Camp, Katmai National Park[11]
For his Ph.D. degree at Princeton (1960), under the guidance of Harry Hammond Hess, Shoemaker
studied the impact dynamics of Barringer Meteor Crater. Shoemaker noted Meteor Crater had the
same form and structure as two explosion craters created from atomic bomb tests at the Nevada
Test Site, notably Jangle U in 1951 and Teapot Ess in 1955. In 1960, Edward C. T. Chao and
Shoemaker identified shocked quartz (coesite) at Meteor Crater, proving the crater was formed from
an impact generating extremely high temperatures and pressures. They followed this discovery with
the identification of coesite within suevite at Nördlinger Ries, proving its impact origin.[12]
In 1960, Shoemaker directed a team at the USGS center in Menlo Park, California, to generate the
first geologic map of the Moon using photographs taken by Francis G. Pease. Shoemaker also
helped pioneer the field of astrogeology by founding the Astrogeology Research Program. He was
prominently involved in the Lunar Ranger missions to the Moon, joining the television imaging team
of Harold Urey and Gerard Kuiper, which turned into a preparatory mission for the future manned
landing. Shoemaker was then chosen to be the principal investigator for the Surveyor program's
television experiment, and then the lunar geology principal investigator for Apollo 11, Apollo 12,
and Apollo 13.[12]:85-86,92-97,101,119,136
Shoemaker was also involved in the training of the American astronauts. He himself was a possible
candidate for an Apollo Moon flight and was set to be the first geologist to walk on the Moon but was
disqualified due to being diagnosed with Addison's disease, a disorder of the adrenal gland.
Shoemaker would train astronauts during field trips to Meteor Crater and Sunset Crater near
Flagstaff.[13] He was a CBS News television commentator on the early Apollo missions, especially
the Apollo 8 and Apollo 11 missions, appearing with Walter Cronkite during live coverage of those
flights.[14]
According to David H. Levy, just before the manned Moon landings,
"With humanity about to set forth upon this new world, geologists and astronomers were divided as
to whether the lunar surface was a result of volcanic forces from beneath, or cosmic forces from
above. In 1949, Ralph Baldwin had articulated that the Moon's craters were mostly of impact origin
and Gene Shoemaker revived the idea again around 1960. He saw craters on the Moon as logical
impact sites that were formed not gradually, in eons, but explosively, in seconds."[12]:58-59
He was awarded the John Price Wetherill Medal from the Franklin Institute in 1965. Coming
to Caltech in 1969, he started a systematic search for Earth orbit-crossing asteroids, which resulted
in the discovery of several families of such asteroids, including the Apollo asteroids. Shoemaker
advanced the idea that sudden geologic changes can arise from asteroid strikes and that asteroid
strikes are common over geologic time periods. Previously, astroblemes were thought to be
remnants of extinct volcanoes — even on the Moon.
