April 30, 1996 Contact: Robert Irion (408) 459-2495; irion@ua.ucsc.edu

UC SANTA CRUZ ASTRONOMER ELECTED TO NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SANTA CRUZ, CA--Astronomer Jerry E. Nelson of the University of California Observatories/Lick Observatory, UC Santa Cruz, was one of 60 leading scientists and engineers elected today (April 30) as new members of the National Academy of Sciences.

Election to the academy, one of the highest honors for American scientists, recognizes distinguished and continuing achievement in original research. Among this year's honorees were nine University of California professors: four from San Diego and one each from Berkeley, Irvine, UCLA, San Francisco, and Santa Cruz. The academy's membership of 1,760 now includes twelve faculty members (eight of them emeritus) at UCSC.

A professor of astronomy and astrophysics, Nelson has gained renown as principal designer and project scientist for the world's largest optical telescopes: the W. M. Keck Telescope in Hawaii and its twin, Keck II, which astronomers will dedicate on May 8. Each telescope has a honeycombed array of 36 mirror segments, aligned precisely by computers to act as a single reflective surface ten meters wide. This design concept, which seemed radical when Nelson first proposed and advocated it in the mid-1970s, has led to dramatic advances in astronomy since Keck I began taking scientific observations three years ago.

"I feel honored and privileged to be elected to the academy," says Nelson. "My election is a tribute to all of those people who, from very early on, worked long and hard on developing ideas for the Keck Telescope--especially the engineers who have brought it to fruition and the superb astronomers at UC and Caltech who have done such exciting science with it."

Nelson is now working on refining the quality of images from both telescopes, developing an "adaptive optics" system for Keck II to counteract the blurring effects of the planet's atmosphere, and-- ultimately--combining some images from Keck I and II to create ultrasharp resolution.

Nelson, age 52, came to UCSC in 1994 after many years at UC Berkeley. He received his B.S. in physics from the California Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. in elementary particle physics from UC Berkeley. He has earned several honors for his work on the Keck Telescopes, including the 1995 Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics from the American Astronomical Society and the 1996 Joseph Fraunhofer Award from the Optical Society of America.

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