Nelson, Jerry Earl

Nelson, Jerry Earl

(1944–  ) astrophysicist; born in Glendale, Calif. This maker of gadgets from boyhood solved the physical problems that had long inhibited building the largest telescope in the world. A researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory beginning in 1975, his honeycomb mirror concept and project direction enabled the construction of the 33-foot-wide Keck telescope on Hawaii's Mauna Kea volcano.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.