Elbert King
The first curator of the Apollo Moon rocks, who helped design how they were received and protected on Earth.
Key facts
- Born
- 1935
- Died
- 1998
- Nationality
- American
- Field
- Geologist and curator
Elbert Aubrey King Jr. was a geologist who joined NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston in the 1960s. He studied tektites and meteorites, and he was given a task no one had done before: planning how to receive, store and share rocks from the Moon.
King became the first curator of the Lunar Receiving Laboratory, built so that Apollo samples could be opened in sealed cabinets filled with dry nitrogen, protected from Earth's air and from contamination. In July 1969 he was among the first scientists to see the rocks brought back by Apollo 11, and he described the excitement of opening the boxes in a popular book.
The curation methods he helped design are still used today, not only for Moon rocks but also for Antarctic meteorites and for samples returned from comets and asteroids. Every sample is given a number, a record of where it came from and what has been done to it, so that scientists anywhere can request pieces for study.
King later became a professor at the University of Houston, where he taught geology and wrote a textbook on space geology. He also helped to set up the meteorite collection at the university.