Dr. Wayne H. Warren, Jr.

Dr. Wayne H. Warren, Jr. of Jacksonville, Florida, passed away peacefully on June 17, 2023, in the care of hospice at Baptist South Hospital at the age of 82. He is preceded in death by his wife Martha, and his parents Wayne and Grace. He is survived by his 3 children, Ken, Sandra and Katherine and 3 grandchildren, Madison, Elijah, and Amanda.

Dr. Warren was born in Newark, New Jersey. After graduating from high school, he went on to pursue further education at Farleigh Dickinson University where he earned his bachelor’s degree in physics (1968) and was inducted into the Phi Omega Epsilon Honor Society. During that time, he worked for Bell Laboratories and met his wife, Martha. They married in 1967. Wayne was accepted to Indiana University where he intended to pursue graduate degrees in astronomy. The family moved to Bloomington, Indiana where Wayne earned a master’s degree in astronomy (1970) and a Ph.D. in astronomy (1975). Upon completion of his Ph.D., Dr. Warren was offered a position to work in the Astronomical Data Center at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD; he was the Data Center director from 1977 until he retired in 1992. He became world-renowned as an expert of star catalogs, receiving the George Van Biesbroeck prize from the American Astronomical Society for this work in 1994. Starting in 1992, Dr. Warren served as an Adjunct Professor at both Towson State University and the University of Maryland University College teaching physics and astronomy.

For Wayne’s work in astronomy, the approximately 9-kilometer asteroid (38036) 1998 RE1, discovered in 1998 by John Broughton in Reedy Creek, Queensland, Australia, has been named Waynewarren by the Minor Planet Center of the International Astronomical Union. The citation for the naming is: Wayne H. Warren (1940-2023) obtained his astronomy Ph.D. in 1975 and worked with others to set up the Astronomical Data Base and Retrieval System at NASA-GSFC, for which he received the Van Biesbroeck prize in 1994. He taught astronomy at universities for many years and as an IOTA member recorded numerous lunar grazes, solar eclipses and asteroid occultations.The asteroid is currently in the constellation Corvus, the Crow, just south of Virgo, but it remains too close to the Sun, or too far south, to observe from northern latitudes for the next several months. It won’t be until 2025 that there will be good visibility from our area.

From 1991 to 2013, Wayne recorded 17 occultations of stars by asteroids, and recorded over 100 lunar occultations over the years, many of them mobile efforts for grazing occultations. From 1963 to 2017, he observed several total solar eclipses, video recording several of them. From South Carolina, he observed the August 2017 total eclipse with his children and grandchildren. David Dunham was fortunate to accompany Wayne on many of these observing trips. Wayne was active in the National Capital Astronomers (NCA) from at least 1979 until he passed. He held several different positions, serving as Vice President from mid-1993 to mid-1994, President from mid-1994 to mid-1996, and as a Trustee from 1998 to 2019. He did most of the work to scan the early-year issues of Star Dust, NCA’s publication, for their online archive and was an editorial advisor since 2008. In 2018, he relocated to northeast Florida to be closer to his daughters. Wayne had an encyclopedic knowledge of astronomy and astronomers, with friends and colleagues all over the world. His wit and knowledge will be sorely missed, by NCA and by his many other friends.

Crevasse's Simple Cremation is honored to serve the Warren family.