Gerald Kron

A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he earned a Master of Science degree in mechanical engineering in 1934, Kron became interested in astronomy, which he studied under Joel Stebbins.

During World War II, Kron served with the Radiation Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and participated in the development of microwave radar.

He attended Lincoln High School in Milwaukee, and then University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he earned a Master of Science degree in mechanical engineering in 1934.

Stebbins arranged for Kron to enter the University of California at Berkeley,[3] where he received his doctorate in astronomy in 1938,[2] with a thesis on the photometric elements of eclipsing binaries.

[2] In May 1940 Kron joined the Radiation Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and participated in the development of microwave radar.

[4] Later in World War II he became head of the Special Devices Group at the Naval Ordnance Test Station (NOTS) at Inyokern, California, where he conducted studies on solid fuel rockets.

He regularly visited Canberra in Australia, where the Mount Stromlo Observatory allowed him to study M-type dwarf stars in the southern sky.

[2] Kron published over 130 scientific papers, many of them described the method accurately measure the light of stars and globular clusters.

His measurements of globular clusters in the Large Magellanic Cloud revised earlier views on distances outside the Milky Way Galaxy.