Jerry Earl Nelson (January 15, 1944 – June 10, 2017) was an American astronomer known for his pioneering work designing segmented mirror telescopes,[1] which led to him sharing the 2010 Kavli Prize for Astrophysics.
[4][5] As a high school student in 1960, Nelson got an early start in astronomy when he attended the Summer Science Program where he studied under astronomers Paul Routly and George Abell.
To deal with this, Nelson contributed to the design of an alignment system that used 168 electronic sensors mounted on the edges of the hexagonal mirror segments and 108 motor-driven adjusting mechanisms to continually keep the mirror system in the correct shape.
[8] In 2010, he shared the million dollar Kavli Prize for Astrophysics for his work on segmented mirrors.
—UCSC Chancellor George R. Blumenthal[2] Nelson died in Santa Cruz, California on June 10, 2017.