Ron Wells

Ronald A. Wells recently retired as a Computer Resource Specialist from the University of California, Berkeley. Ron originally got his degrees in Astronomy at UC Berkeley (A.B.) and at University College London (Ph.D.). He worked for many years at the Space Sciences Laboratory at UC Berkeley as a planetary astronomer in lunar and Martian studies and is the author of Geophysics of the Planet Mars (Elsevier Scientific Publ. Co., Amsterdam, 1979), a research text that integrated earth-based and spacecraft observations of Mars through the early months of the Viking landers.

In another of his alter egos, Ron was awarded two Fulbright scholarships for his interest in astronomy of ancient cultures. He served the first one in Egypt at the University of Cairo and at Helwan Observatory in 1983-4, and the second as a professor at the Institute of Archaeology, Egyptology Division, University of Hamburg in 1987-8. He has published in professional Egyptology journals and wrote the chapter, 'Astronomy in Egypt', in the book, Astronomy Before the Telescope (British Museum Press, London, 1996), a collection of 17 chapters treating the development of astronomy in various early cultures around the world. He also authored the articles "Astronomy", "Astrology", "Horoscopes", and "Technology and Engineering" in the 4-volume Encyclopedia of Egyptology (Oxford University Press, New York, 2001). Ron has also presented papers at recent conferences on Astronomy and Mathematics in the Ancient Near East at the British Museum (2000) and at the American Research Center in Egypt, Spring Meeting, Tucson, AZ (2004).

The Apollo Lunar Surface Journal has rekindled Ron's first love of lunar and planetary studies because as he says: "I did not get this kind of detail of the missions at the time they occurred since the media failed to keep the public as informed as they should have. Unless one was working in Houston or at the Cape at the Mission Control Centers, it was unfortunately not possible to follow these events as they happened." Ron will be spending most of his retirement returning to his first love, working in lunar mapping studies and computer graphics. To that end he formed a small company, Tranquillity Enterprises, s.p., and has set up a 3D photogrammetric workstation with a NASA grant for processing lunar and planetary photos.

Ronald Wells

Ron's son, Chris, assembled some early panoramas for the Journal. Chris is a Multimedia Designer at Fürst und Zitt GmbH in Vienna, Austria where he is involved with all aspects of Multimedia design, specializing in online Flash applications. Special thanks to Chris for this web page design which incorporates both of Ron's interests into the imaginative "What if...." adaptation of Jack Schmitt at Tracy's Rock, Station 6. They can be reached at:

Ronald Wells (rwells42 at berkeley full stop edu)

Chris Wells (cw at intermaps full stop com)
URL: http://www.intermaps.com