Oct 10 2003
From The Space Library
NASA announced the appointment of Steven J. Dick as NASA's Chief Historian, to succeed Roger D. Launius, who had departed in July 2002 to become Historian of the National Air and Space Museum. An astronomer and historian of science, Dick had served as the first Historian of the U.S. Naval Observatory and, just before his NASA appointment, had been Acting Chief of the Naval Observatory's Nautical Almanac Office. As an expert in the field of astrobiology and its cultural implications, Dick had served on a panel examining the potential societal implications of the discovery of life in the Mars rock. He had received the NASA Group Achievement Award in recognition of his contributions to the establishment of the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI), including the definition of the field of astrobiology. Dick had authored more than 100 works, including a history of the Naval Observatory, Sky and Ocean Joined: The U.S. Naval Observatory, 1830-2000, which had won the John Lyman Award of the North American Society for Oceanic History for best book in 2002 in Science and Technology and the U.S. Naval Observatory's Captain James Melville Gilliss Award for extraordinary dedication and exemplary service. At the time of his appointment, Dick served on the editorial boards of several journals and was an associate editor of the International Journal of Astrobiology. From 1993 to 1994, Dick had served as Chairperson of the Historical Astronomy Division of the American Astronomical Society, and between 1997 and 2000, he had been President of the History of Astronomy Commission of the International Astronomical Union. (NASA, “NASA Names New Historian,” news release 03-327, 10 October 2003, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2003/oct/HQ_03327_new_historian.html (accessed 27 January 2009).
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