Michael Logan Lampton (born March 1, 1941) is an American astronaut, founder of the optical ray tracing compan
Stellar Software
and known for his paper on electroacoustics with Susan M Lea, ''The theory of maximally flat loudspeaker systems''.

Personal

Lampton was born March 1, 1941 in

Williamsport, Pennsylvania Williamsport is a city in, and the county seat of, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, United States. It recorded a population of 27,754 at the 2020 Census. It is the principal city of the Williamsport Metropolitan Statistical Area, which has a popul ...

. He is married to

San Francisco State University San Francisco State University (commonly referred to as San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a public research university in San Francisco. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers 118 different b ...

physicist, Susan M. Lea, with whom he has one daughter, Jennifer Lea Lampton.

Education

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University o ...

degree in

Physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which rel ...

from

Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...

, 1962 * Ph.D. in Physics from the

University of California-Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant univ ...

, 1967

SNAP Project

Lampton has been heavily involved with the SNAP project. SNAP, the Supernova/Acceleration Probe, will study exploding stars called supernovae, as well as the gentle smearing of the light from distant galaxies due to gravity — called weak gravitational lensing — and put limits on what may or may not be the force driving the outward pull on the Universe. SNAP will investigate over one thousand square degrees of sky with a 500 megapixel camera. SNAP is part of the Joint Dark Energy Mission (JDEM), which is a cooperative venture between

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeedi ...

and the U.S. Department of Energy. SNAP collaborators John Mather and George Smoot were awarded the 2006 Nobel prize in physics.

Career with NASA

Lampton was a NASA payload specialist from 1978 to 1992. Below is a list of the missions he was a part of.

Pranks

In 1961, while Lampton was attending

he was one of the "Fiendish Fourteen", 14 students responsible for the Great Rose Bowl Hoax.

References

{{Authority control 1941 births Living people American astronauts University of California, Berkeley alumni California Institute of Technology alumni