Winifred Sawtell Cameron (December 3, 1918 – March 29, 2016) was an American astronomer. She worked at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland for most of her career, and compiled the Lunar Transient Phenomena (LTP) database. She was involved in the Gemini and Apollo programs.
After college, Sawtell worked at Weather Forecasts, Inc. in Chicago, from 1943 to 1946, and again from 1949 to 1950. She taught astronomy at Mount Holyoke College from 1950 to 1951. She was a researcher at the United States Naval Observatory from 1951 to 1958, analyzing sunspots.[4]
In 1959, Winifred Cameron and her husband both joined NASA's new Goddard Space Flight Center, where she was a lunar expert[5][6][7] and head of Data Acquisition and Analysis.[8] She compiled the Lunar Transient Phenomena (LTP) database, still in use.[9] She was astronomer-on-base at Cape Canaveral during two Mercury flights, and an advisor on the Apollo Moon landings.[4] She was the only woman scientist in attendance at the international Lunar Geological Field Conference in Oregon in 1965.[10] She gave frequent talks on her work to civic organizations, schools,[11] and amateur astronomers.[12][13]
Winifred Sawtell married fellow astronomer Robert Curry Cameron in 1953.[17][18] They had two daughters, Selene and Sheri. Robert died in 1972. Winifred died in 2016, aged 98, in Lehigh Acres, Florida.
There is an asteroid named 1575 Winifred, after Cameron;[19] and she named a lunar crater Cameron in memory of her husband.[4]
References
^"Amos Alexander Sawtell". The Palm Beach Post. March 17, 1950. p. 4. Retrieved May 26, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
^"Girl Scouts". Oak Park Oak Leaves. December 18, 1931. p. 36. Retrieved May 26, 2019 – via NewspaperArchive.com.
