Stanley Ernest Whitcomb (born January 23, 1951, in Denver)[1] is an American physicist and was the chief scientist at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) project when the first direct detection of gravitational waves was made in September 2015.
[3] Whitcomb joined the gravitational wave effort in 1980 and participated in the early experimental work that proved the feasibility of making such precise measurements.
[4]Kip Thorne and Ronald Drever were the earliest leaders of Caltech's pioneering gravitational wave program.
Whitcomb, Siu Au Lee, Robert E. Spero, and Mark Hereld were among the program's first five recruits.
In 1985 Whitcomb moved to Northrop Corporation as a research engineer in the electronics division and then became a project manager.