MIT Professor Emeritus George Whipple Clark PhD ’52, an astrophysicist who was highly influential in X-ray and gamma-ray astronomy, died on April 6 in Boston. He was 94. Clark employed buckets, balloons, rockets, and satellites in his nearly lifelong pursuit to understand the nature and origins of cosmic rays, gamma rays, and X-rays. Clark discovered the polarization of cosmic-ray muons, collaborated with the late physics professor Bruno Rossi on several large ground-based cosmic-ray air shower experiments, and used balloon-borne and satellite instrumentation to locate X-ray sources. He was a principal…
