Samuel Herrick

Correspondence with physicist R. H. Goddard, 1932

"Rocket Navigation," an article written by Samuel Herrick.

"An Astronomical Approach to the Problem of Satellite Rendezvous," by Pasquale Sconzo, selected from Herrick's subject files.

"The Artificial Earth Satellie - A New Geodetic Tool," by Bruce C. Murray, published by the American Rocket Society. Selected from Herrick's subject files.

Draft report of calculation of the rotation of the line of apsides resulting from atmospheric drag, sent to Herrick to review.

Generally recognized as the founder of the field of astrodynamics, Samuel Herrick was born in Madison County, Virginia, in 1911. He received a B. S. in Mathematics from Williams College in 1932 and a Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of California at Berkeley in 1936. Most of his teaching career was spent at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). He was the Hunsaker Professor of Astronomy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during 1961-1962 and was made a professor in the Astronomy and Engineering Departments at UCLA in 1962. Herrick died in 1974.

Herrick's work applied the classic disciplines of celestial mechanics and mathematics (CMM) to the special problems of space trajectory research. His studies of the CMM aspects of space navigation date from 1931, when he received advice and encouragement from R. H. Goddard. As early as 1936, he formulated a development program for the utilization of CMM to help solve space navigation problems destined to become real problems only two decades later. In 1946, Herrick instituted a course in Rocket Navigation, the world's first university course designed specifically for astronautics. In 1957, he founded the Astrodynamics Colloquium at UCLA to facilitate communication among scientists engaged in rocket research.

Herrick's principal contributions to scientific theory are in the areas of orbit determination and ephemeris integration; universal variables; perturbation theory and variation of parameters; differential correction and least squares; space navigation; and sea and air navigation.

See finding aid for the Samuel Herrick Papers to see what else is available for research.