John Armstead Wood

I had a 40-year career in Planetary Science, specifically the study of extraterrestrial rocks (meteorites, lunar samples), principally at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (part of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics). I retired in 2004. Probably my most significant contribution was the discovery, with my research group, of evidence in lunar samples collected by the Apollo 11 astronauts that Earth's early moon was not a cool inert object, as had been previously thought, but was partly or wholly molten when it formed: I coined the term "magma ocean."

Since retirement I have indulged a lifelong love of art, specifically oil painting: see www.woodjohn.net.