Leland Erskin Cunningham (February 10, 1904, in Wiscasset, Maine – May 31, 1989, in Richmond, California) was an American astronomer and discoverer of minor planets.
[2] Cunningham began his career as an assistant to astronomer Fred Whipple at Harvard University.
Cunningham was present at the June 1943 meeting at which J. Presper Eckert, John Mauchly, and Lt. Herman Goldstine proposed the construction of the ENIAC; the program was agreed upon the same day.
From 1945 to 1946, Cunningham served on the BRL's Computations Committee at Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland, a group established as part of the Ballistics Research Laboratory to prepare the ENIAC for utilization following its completion the Moore School; the other Computations Committee members were Haskell Curry, Derrick Henry Lehmer, and Franz Alt.
Working with the Leuschner Observatory in the 1950s and 1960s, Cunningham performed and published calculations of the orbits of comets.