he met gerard kiper at a meeting. there were about 400 people at the meeting and only whittaker replied. he was going to go back to england when it was all over and he ended up staying and making maps for the moon on incredible endeavor to put astronauts on the moon. >> what happened to gerard after 1949? >> he knew about the time that the 1970's rolled around that the laboratory was not going last unless they became a teaching department and so they had the incredible vision -- he wasn't entirely interested in teaching, he was interesting in research but had incredible vision to know that the research funding was going to trickle away and if we wanted to get out not just the moon but much further out in the solar system, he was going to need to make sure the laboratory would last and founded the department of planetary sciences which is is still here in the university of arizona today and passed on the baton to the directors after him to keep both the laboratory going. >> what kind of work are they doing today? >> al