ITHACA, N.Y. (AP) – Physicist Ernest Sternglass, whose research helped make it possible for the world to see the first moon walk, has died at age 91 of heart failure.
His research helped lead to a sensitive television camera tube that captured low-light lunar action during the 1969 moon landing and U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong’s historic first steps.
Sternglass also conducted pioneering work in digital X-ray imaging during a long tenure at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, according to Cornell University, where Sternglass attended school and where his papers are archived.
Sternglass died Feb. 12 in Ithaca, New York, Cornell said. He was born in 1923 and fled Nazi Germany with his family in 1938.
As a 23-year-old Cornell graduate, he was working at the Naval Ordnance Laboratory in Washington, D.C., when he wrote to Albert Einstein in 1947 to offer an explanation on a scientific matter. To his surprise, he was invited to the famous scientist’s home in Princeton, New Jersey.