Buku CORS and OPUS

A publication of ASCE “CORS and OpuS: Tools for Surveying and Mapping Application”.

CORS and Opus

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Nasa Reading Sources

Nasa has a lot of reading materials on various aspect of their activities. For instance a collection of articles on societal impact of space flight in context which contain 34 chapters can be access online.

Chapter 1: Has spaceflight had an impact on society? an interpretative framework.

Chapter 2: What are turning points in history, and what were they for the space age?

Chapter 3: In search of a red cosmos: space exploration, public culture and Soviet society.

More about it can be access here … source: history-nasa.

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Bengkel Pemantapan Kurikulum Geomatik

Satu lagi bengkel yang turut diadakan minggu ini ialah Bengkel Pemantapan Kurikulum BSc Kej Geomatik. Bengkel diadakan selama dua hari 18-19 Jan 2017. Ini adalah lanjutan dari resolusi yang diputuskan ketika Bengkel Strategi di Melaka pada Dec 2015 lalu.

Dekan FGHT merasmi Bengkel

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Bengkel Penyediaan Proposal FRGS

FGHT telah mengadakan bengkel berkaitan penyediaan proposal FRGS. Bengkel diadakan sehari pada hari ini di Blok T06. Penceramah yang dijemput ialah PM Dr Zulkifli Latif dari Jabatan Sains Ukur Uitm dan juga salah seorang pengurus RMC di Uitm. Beliau diundang hadir atas kapasiti sebagai salah seorang panel penilai proposal diperingkat KPT.

PM Dr Zulkifli Latif menyampai taklimat

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Fred Doyle dan GS OSU (1920-2013)

Apabila Dept of GS OSU ditubuhkan Fred Doyle adalah salah seorang professor yang menjadi pengasasnya. Beliau bersama Heiskanen merupakan tokoh utama di belakang penubuhan GS di OSU. Pada ketika itu nama GS belum digunakan sebaliknya Institute of Geodesy, Photogrammetry and Cartography. Kepakaran Prof Doyle ialah bidang fotogrammetri

Fred Doyle
(d.17 Apr 2013 age 93 yrs)

BSc CE Syracuse 1951; 1954 - Assoc Prof OSU; 1960 Chief Scientist at Raytheon; 1967 joined USGS; 1969 Appolo project; Hon Doc TU Hannover; OSU; KTH.

Read - photogrammetric mapping specialist for NASA dies at 93 washingtonpost;

Isprs announcement - here.

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LA Kivioja (OSU PhD 1963)

Another OSU PhD graduate, the third in gravity (after Uotila & Mueller) was Lassi Annti Kivioja. He wrote a thesis entitled "The effect of topography and its isostatic compensation on free air gravity anomalies" and was awarded a PhD in 1963. The research was supervised by Prof Heiskanen with helps by Dr Helmut Moritz, Mueller and Uotila.

Kivioja was born in Kalajoki, Finland, March 29, 1927. He received his MSc in 1952 from University of Helsinki. He started working in OSU as research associate in October 1955.

Kivioja
MSc Helsinki 1952; PhD OSU 1963
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Ivan Istvan Mueller (OSU PhD 1960)

Ivan Mueller was awarded PhD in Geology by OSU in 1960. His thesis entitled "The Gradients of Gravity and Their Applications in Geodesy" was supervised by Prof Heiskanen with Dr Hirvonen (Finland Inst of Technology) and Dr HJ Pincus (Geology OSU) as members of the reading committee.

Ivan Mueller (IAG President 1987-1991)

Mueller dedicated his work to Prof Roland Eotvos of Hungary. He wrote the following as tribute to Eotvos;

In 1901 Professor Roland Eotvos, Hungarian physicist, in his opening speech as President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, said that scientists have tried to determine the shape and size of the Earth for centuries but  ... good results can be obtained only if we concentrate upon the investigation of the Earth's gravity field, since it was gravity which determined the shape of the oceans and’.

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Urho Uotila (PhD - OSU 1959)

The first PhD thesis on gravimetry at OSU was written by Urho Uotila.Uotila is a re-known professor in geodesy at OSU Geodetic Science Dept. Uotila (his full name is Urho Antti Kalevi Uotila) obtained PhD from OSU in 1959. His thesis “Investigation on the gravity field and shape of the Earth” was the first doctoral dissertation on gravity written at OSU. Uotila’s research was supervised by Heiskanen and the thesis was examined by Dr Paul M Pepper (Director of MCRL OSU) and Dr Chuji Tsuboi of Tokyo University. The computational task was handled by the Numerical Computation Laboratory at OSU on IBM 650 machine. The machine was bought and installed at OSU in 1956.

With this machine, the gravity group at OSU (particularly Uotila and Heiskanen) had calculated the bumps and depressions of the geoid reliably for over seven thousand points located in the northern hemisphere. Too little material had been obtained from the southern hemisphere in order for the results to be reliable. According to the calculation work, the geoid surface is slightly over 40 meters too low in the western part of the Atlantic, some 40 meters too high in the eastern part of the Atlantic and in Central and South-West Europe, about 25 meters too low in India, approximately 20 meters too high in the East-Indian archipelago and so on.

Uotila’s thesis consists of ten sections/chapters with 152 written pages. Fifty eight references were listed.

Urho Uotila

(b.1923; d.2006)

Read Uotila thesis - here.

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George Veis - OSU PhD 1958

In 1958 George Veis has completed his PhD thesis “Geodetic applications of observations of the Moon, artificial satellites and rockets”. This is the first PhD on topic of satellite geodesy produced by OSU. The research was supervised by WA Heiskanen together with RA Hirvonen and S Laurila. What’s interesting is the period Veis worked was soon after the launched of Sputnik 1  and US first satellite Explorer 1. The former was launched on Oct 4, 1957 while the latter Jan 31, 1958.

Read citation at the awarding Levallois Medal ceremony by IAG (link).

George Veis (b.1929)
Dipl-Ing Athens 1951

Retired from NTUA in 1997

Contents of Veis thesis;

Part One: the theory

The coordinate systems and related problems

Observations to objects of known positions

Simultaneous observations to objects of unknown positions

The use of orbiting objects

Part Two – The Applications

Observations, reductions and corrections

The use of the Moon

The use of rockets

Use of artificial satellites

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Clair Eugene Ewing (PhD OSU - 1955)

The first PhD awarded by OSU Dept of Geodetic Science was to C. E. Ewing in 1955. Ewing wrote a thesis "The parallel radius method of solving the inverse Shoran problem". At that time the GS Department was known as Institute of Geodesy, Photogrammetry & Cartography, under the Dept of Geology. Ewing's work was under the guidance of four geodesy mentors at OSU - WA Heiskanen, FJ Doyle, RA Hirvonen & Simon Laurila.

The main body of the thesis written by Ewing consists of 74 pages only. It has many computation results and table with total of 230 pages. Glancing through the references (or written as Bibliography) only sixteen materials were included. Out of that only two text books on Geodesy were cited - Geodesy by Bomford (1952 - 454 pages) and Geodesy by George L Hosmer (1929 - 461 pages). The rest of the references were geodesy reports from Finland and OSU and a number of publications only.

That shows geodesy in the early 1950s was really a  discipline with very few textbooks and journal papers available. And the means to access to the materials at that time is merely by personal correspondence to authors.

Ewing was born in September 1915. He obtained a BSc in CE from Kansas in 1941 and MSc CE from Colorado in 1950. He work with US Army.

Geodesy by CE Ewing (1970)
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William Mason Kaula (MSc OSU - 1953)

The first MSc in Geodetic Science at OSU was awarded to William Mason Kaula (WM Kaula) in 1953. He wrote a thesis “Gravimetrically computed deflections of the vertical”. The work was supervised by WA Heiskanen and the thesis was 60 pages. Unfortunately there is no digital copy available.

Kaula was born in Sydney Australia in 1926.Within the geodetic community Kaula was nicknamed as the father of space-based geodesy. He arrived Colombus in June 1952, being the first student enrolled into the new program at OSU with only one faculty (WA Heiskanen). He left the army service 1957 and joined Dept of Defence with John O'Keefe as his boss. Later in 1960 Kaula moved to NASA to work as project scientist for a geodetic satellite. He started active in publishing papers in JGR with average of six papers per year.

Kaula's work interested a visiting consultant at NASA, Gordon MacDonald of the UCLA. This led to a tenured faculty appointment at UCLA in 1963, an unusual event for someone without a PhD. In partial compensation for never having gotten a PhD Kaula wrote two books, Theory of Satellite Geodesy (1966) and An Introduction to Planetary Physics (1968). Kaula was attached to the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics UCLA. He died of cancer on April 1, 2000.

William M Kaula (1926-2000)

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