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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