Who was James Webb, anyway?
In 2002, Sean O’Keefe, then the NASA administrator, announced that the agency’s next telescope would be named for James Webb, who led NASA during the 1960s, when it was gearing up to land people on the moon.
He was a staunch champion of space science. Some astronomers were disappointed that it would not be named for an astronomer, while others objected on more serious grounds, namely that Mr.
Webb bore some responsibility for an event during the Truman administration known as the Lavender Scare that resulted in the purging of gay and lesbian employees from the State Department.
At the time, Mr. Webb had been the under secretary of state. That issue gained prominence a year ago when four astronomers — Lucianne Walkowicz of the JustSpace Alliance and Adler Planetarium in Chicago, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein of the University of New Hampshire, Brian Nord of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and the University of Chicago and Sarah Tuttle of the University of Washington — published an op-ed in Scientific American, “The James Webb Space Telescope Needs to Be Renamed.” NASA said it would investigate the claims and publish a report.
