Thomas Wm Hamilton

Thomas Wm. Hamilton was born in San Francisco, where his family was so long settled that City Hall is on a street named for his great great grandfather. Following his father's death he was raised in New York City by his mother and some of her family. He graduated valedictorian and Sergeant-Major from Eastern Military Academy, and attended Columbia College, working on the school radio station and majoring in German and Astronomy. This led after graduate school to an invitation to work on the Apollo Project in 1963, where he was involved in determining fuel usage, radar accuracy requirements, and orbital maneuvers around the Moon. Later he worked for a planetarium manufacturer for two years, and then taught college astronomy for 34 years while giving planetarium shows. In 2009 the International Astronomical Union named asteroid 4897 Tomhamilton for him. In 2010 he created a scholarship for students interested in a career in the planetarium field.