Roy Edward Nather (September, 23 1926 – August 13, 2014) was an American astronomer, who at the time of his death, was professor emeritus in Astronomy at University of Texas at Austin.

[1] He served as the director of the Whole Earth Telescope for the first decade of its existence,[2] and achieved internet fame by posting the Story of Mel, a Real Programmer, on Usenet.

[4][8] From 1960 to 1961 Nather worked as a programmer for Royal McBee, a computer company, where he was impressed by the programming skills of his colleague Melvin Kaye.

[5] He soon began working with Brian Warner and David Evans, together pioneering the field of high-speed photometry for studying variable stars and measuring stellar radii by observing lunar occultations.

[6] So he moved with his family to South Africa and completed a Ph.D. at the University of Cape Town titled High Speed Photoelectric Photometry.