Charles Stuart Bowyer

Did You Know?

• Bowyer was born in Toledo, Ohio, to Howard and Elizabeth Bowyer; his father was a pilot.
• He attended a one-room grade school near his father’s farm in Orland Park, Illinois, and was valedictorian at Orland Park High School.

Career

Charles Stuart Bowyer taught at the University of California at Berkeley and worked at the United States Naval Research Laboratory as part of Herbert Friedman's group. He is widely recognized as the founder of extreme ultraviolet astronomy. Early on, many astronomers doubted his work, arguing that ultraviolet light would be absorbed and undetectable even beyond Earth's atmosphere. But in 1975, Bowyer and his team placed a sensor on the Apollo–Soyuz mission and successfully detected ultraviolet radiation from white dwarfs and a nova. He also guided the development and launch of the EUVE satellite, which orbited Earth from 1992 to 2001, cataloging roughly 800 extreme ultraviolet sources in the Milky Way before funding ran out. Bowyer was also deeply involved in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. In 1977, he founded SERENDIP, a project inspired by NASA's 1971 Project Cyclops report. Using an 85-foot telescope at Hat Creek Radio Observatory near Lassen Peak, SERENDIP ran in the background of other astronomers' observations, scanning 100 radio frequencies at once for signals from intelligent life. The effort was largely funded by private donors, including science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke.

Honors

In 1982, Bowyer was honored with the Senior Scientist Award from Germany’s Humboldt Foundation. His other accolades include NASA’s Exceptional Technical Achievement and Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medals, the Humboldt Prize, honorary doctorates from Miami University of Ohio and the Catholic University of America, the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, the Computerworld Smithsonian Award, and the COSPAR Massey Award.