Bruce E. Woodgate (1939 – April 28, 2014) was a British-born American aerospace engineer, inventor and astronomer, who worked at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center for forty years.
Woodgate's invention has been called a "game changer" in the field of astronomy, allowing scientists to discover an "invisible high-speed collision" near SN 1987A, as well as new planets and black holes.
Aside his from his work as the principal investigator on STIS, Woodgate had also begun development on a new UV detector which counts protons utilizing new nano-fabrication technologies.
[1] He was active in several new technologies such as photon-counting electron multiplying CCDs and integral field spectrographs designed for the direct detection of habitable exoplanets.
[2] In 1975, Woodgate joined the staff of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, where he worked for the rest of his career.