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Memorial Tributes Volume 11 (2007) / Chapter Skim
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James Gilbert Baker
Pages 6-11

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From page 7...
... Jim also fabricated mirrors for his own telescopes and helped form the Louisville Astronomical Society in 1931. While he was still a student, he met his future wife, Elizabeth Katherine Breitenstein, of Jefferson County, Kentucky.
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From page 8...
... More than 100 other projects were subsequently developed, with lenses up to 12 inches in diameter. As director of the Observatory Optical Project at Harvard University from 1943 to 1945, Jim spent thousands of hours doing calculations on a Marchant calculator to produce his aerial cameras.
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From page 9...
... Jim continued to advise top government officials as reconnaissance systems evolved during the 1960s and 1970s, and he helped create the camera systems used in the SR-71 Blackbird, the Air Force high-speed reconnaissance plane, which was in use from the 1960s to the 1990s. He also designed some of the lenses and camera systems for the Air Force Samos Satellite Program.
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From page 10...
... , and, in 1960, he was elected president of OSA for one year, during which he helped establish the Applied Optics journal. He was the only individual to receive all four primary OSA awards in optics: the Adolf Lomb Award, Frederick Ives Medal, Joseph Fraunhofer Award, and David Richardson Medal.
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From page 11...
... Baker will be greatly missed by all who knew him. He is survived by his wife, Elizabeth; his four children, Kirby Alan, Dennis Graham, Neal Kenton, and Brenda Sue; and seven grandchildren.
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