Alastair G. W. Cameron family name Cameron
Alastair G. W. (Graham Walter) Cameron (21 June 1925 – 3 October 2005) was an American-Canadian astrophysicist and space scientist who was an eminent staff member of the Astronomy department of Harvard University. He was one of the founders of the field of nuclear astrophysics, advanced the theory that the Moon was created by the giant impact of a Mars-sized object with the early Earth, and was an early adopter of computer technology in astrophysics.Early life and education
Alastair Cameron was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, to parents of Scottish descent. His father, born in London, England, was chemist A.T. Cameron, a professor and chair of the biochemistry department at Manitoba Medical College. He recalls addressing all men as “Doctor” as a four-year-old, noting it was "clearly an early attempt at forming a hypothesis based on limited data."In 1940 (When Cameron was only 15 years old), he made a bet with a high school classmate that man would land on the moon within 40 years. When the Apollo program achieved a successful moon landing in 1969, the former classmate sent a cheque to settle the bet, which Cameron had framed and hung on the wall in his office.Cameron earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Manitoba in Physics and Mathematics. During the summers, he worked at the Chalk River Laboratory, a Canadian research facility on Ontario. He went on to do graduate work in both theoretical and experimental nuclear physics at the University of Saskatchewan. Under the supervision of Leon Katz, he studied photonuclear cross sections using the university's new 25 MeV betatron accelerator. In 1952, earned the first PhD awarded in physics from the university.
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