David C. Jewitt

David Clifford Jewitt (born 1958) is a British astronomer who studies the Solar System, focusing on its smaller objects. He works at the University of California, Los Angeles, holding roles as a Member of the Institute for Geophysics and Planetary Physics, Director of the Institute for Planets and Exoplanets, and professor in both the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Department of Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences. His most famous achievement is co-discovering, with Jane Luu, the first object in the Kuiper belt beyond Pluto and its moon Charon.

Jewitt was born in London in 1958. His mother worked as a telephonist, and his father assembled industrial steel cutters on a production line. The family lived with his grandmother in a social housing project in Tottenham, north London. His interest in astronomy sparked in 1965 after he saw bright meteors, and grew with media coverage of NASA’s Apollo 8 and Apollo 11 missions in 1968 and 1969. His first telescope was a tabletop 40 mm refractor, a birthday gift from his grandparents. He later upgraded to a 150 mm reflector built by his uncle Malcolm, then to a homemade 250 mm instrument, becoming a serious amateur astronomer while still in school. He joined the Transient Lunar Phenomenon subsection of the British Astronomical Association’s Lunar Section, regularly sending in observation reports.

Jewitt attended local authority primary and secondary schools. He was largely self-taught, borrowing books from a traveling library to supplement the few his parents could afford. He first encountered physics at age twelve or thirteen, when a teacher introduced him to the subject. In 1976, with a local authority grant, he enrolled at University College London, studying astronomy, physics, mathematics, computing, electronics, metalwork, and technical drawing at both the Gower Street campus and the UCL Observatory in Mill Hill. His favorite module was a broad physics survey taught by Professor Sir Robert Boyd, a Christian space scientist who drove a Rolls-Royce. He graduated with a first-class honours B.Sc. in astronomy in 1979, alongside his friend Roly Drower, who later became a poet and environmental activist. Following advice from UCL professor Michael Dworetsky, Jewitt pursued postgraduate work at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. He became an Anthony Fellow there in 1979, earning an M.S.