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George Carruthers was born 1939 in Cincinnati, Ohio; child of George Arthur Carruthers and Sophia Singley Carruthers; father an engineer at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base; interest in science from reading science fiction; built his own telescope while in junior high school; very little discrimination in elementary or junior high school even though he was one of few African Americans; moved to Chicago for high school; access to Adler Planetarium and built more telescopes; read about rocket launches and Herb Frieman; read The Viking Rocket Story by Milton Rosen; undergraduate University of Illinois 1957-61; Ph.D. University of Illinois 1964; "An Experimental Investigation on Atomic Nitrogen Recombination;" while in graduate school spent a summer at AerJet in California; exposure to engineers and "big science;" post-doctorate at E. O. Hurlburt Center for Space Research at Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), in unit headed by Talbot Chubb; dichotomy between scientists and engineers; little discrimination; small science vs. big science; molecular hydrogen; concern with science education and Project SMART; cameras and sensors on rockets; spectrography; electronographic technology; joint proposal with Thorton Page; hired permanently at NRL; charge-coupled device (CCD) technology; Apollo 16; geocorona camera.
