David C. Jewitt

David Clifford Jewitt (born 1958) is an astronomer who studies the Solar System, especially its minor bodies. He is based at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he is a Member of the Institute for Geophysics and Planetary Physics, the Director of the Institute for Planets and Exoplanets, Professor of Astronomy in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and Professor of Astronomy in the Department of Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences. He is best known for being the first person (along with Jane Luu) to discover a body beyond Pluto and Charon in the Kuiper belt.

Jewitt was born in London, England, in 1958. His mother was a telephonist, and his father worked on an assembly line making industrial steel cutters. The family lived with Jewitt's grandmother in a social housing project in the north London suburb of Tottenham.

Jewitt's interest in astronomy was kindled in 1965, when he chanced to see some bright meteors. Media coverage of NASA's Apollo 8 and Apollo 11 lunar missions in 1968 and 1969 added to his enthusiasm. His own exploration of outer space began with a tabletop 40 mm refracting telescope that his grandparents gave him as a birthday present. Upgrading to a 150 mm reflector built by his uncle Malcolm and then a homemade 250 mm instrument, Jewitt became a serious amateur astronomer while still a schoolboy. He joined the Transient lunar phenomenon subsection of the Lunar Section of the British Astronomical Association, and regularly contributed reports of his observations to the Section's circular.

Jewitt was educated at local authority primary and secondary schools. He was also an autodidact, borrowing books from a travelling library to supplement the few that his parents could afford to buy for him. His interest in physics began when a teacher introduced him to the subject, of which he had never previously heard, when he was twelve or thirteen.

In 1976, supported by a local authority grant, Jewitt enrolled at University College London to take courses in astronomy, physics, mathematics, computing, electronics, metalwork and technical drawing, studying both at UCL's Gower Street campus and at the UCL Observatory (then called the University of London Observatory) in Mill Hill. The module that he enjoyed most was a panoramic survey of physics delivered by the Christian, Rolls-Royce-driving space scientist Professor Sir Robert Boyd. Together with his friend, the future poet and environmental activist Roly Drower, Jewitt graduated with a first class honours B.Sc. in astronomy in 1979.

Following the advice of UCL's Professor Michael Dworetsky, Jewitt decided to pursue his postgraduate studies at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. He became an Anthony Fellow at Caltech in 1979, achieving an M.S. in planetary science in 1980. After investigating planetary nebulae and comets with the 200 inch Hale Telescope of the Mount Palomar Observatory, working with Ed Danielson and Gerry Neugebauer under the supervision of Professor James Westphal, he was awarded a Ph.D. in planetary science and astronomy in 1983. He has recalled his adventures in the Hale's vertiginous prime focus cage as occasionally a risk to life and limb.

In 1983, Jewitt became an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1988, attracted by the powerful telescopes sited on Mauna Kea, he moved to the University of Hawaiʻi, becoming an Associate Astronomer in its Institute of Astronomy and an associate professor in its Department of Physics and Astronomy. In 1993, the Institute promoted him to the rank of Astronomer tout court.

In 2009, Jewitt returned to the American mainland to work at the University of California, Los Angeles, becoming a Member of UCLA's Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics and a professor in what was then its Department of Earth and Space Sciences. In 2010 he was given a second chair, becoming a professor in UCLA's Department of Physics and Astronomy. In 2011, he became the Director of UCLA's Institute for Planets and Exoplanets.