In Search Of Van Serg...
You may have seen the name on the list of lunar
features that have been officially sanctioned by the
International Astronomical Union:
|
FEATURE NAME
|
LAT
|
LONG
|
DIAM (KM) |
ORIGIN
|
|
Van Serg
|
20.2N
|
30.8E |
0 |
Astronaut-named feature near Apollo 17 site.
|
Common practice is to name large craters for
famous scientists, scholars and artists. Small craters, if
deemed worthy of having a designation, are usually given common
"first names," such as Alan or Patricia. (Yes, there are
actually craters named Alan and Patricia on the Moon.)
You're probably familiar with some of the
legendary personalities that have had craters named for them —
famous folks such as Pasteur, Fahrenheit, Marconi, Edison and
Einstein. But who exactly was this mysterious "Van Serg" that
managed to get his name on the list of lunar features?
According to an article in the March 1997 edition
of
Harvard Magazine, the university's official
publication for students and alumni, "Van Serg" is not a real
human being. In fact, "Van Serg" is the acronym for a building
on the Harvard campus, later adopted by a Harvard professor as
his nom de plume.
As reported in the "College Pump" section of the
magazine,
How many of us are aware that
a blip on the lunar landscape owes its name to an acronym
devised for a Harvard building? For this piece of intelligence
the Pump is obliged to
Tom Lehrer ('47, A.M. '47), mathematician, teacher, and
comic song writer nonpareil.
From his presumably voluminous
files, Lehrer has sent an old New York Times clipping
stating that the 1972 moon visit of astronauts Eugene Cernan and
Harrison Schmitt will include a stop "at a crater named Van
Serg, after Prof. Hugh McKinstry, a 20th-century mining
geologist who wrote satires under the pseudonym Nicholas Van
Serg." To which Lehrer adds,
Here's my theory:
|
Tom Lehrer |
Hugh McKinstry (1896-1961)
was a professor of geology at Harvard until his death.
The geology department was
near the Vanserg building, and Professor McKinstry must have
known the name. (He may even have dined there, as it was for
some years the home of the graduate dining hall.)
As far as I know, there is
no such name as Van Serg in any language.
It is therefore reasonable
to assume that he took his pen name from the name of the
building, spelling it 'Van Serg' to make it sound more like
a surname.
The Vanserg building is a
'temporary' building, erected at the end of World War II to
house various departments. (The roster has changed over the
years; it has included the mathematics department and —
currently — expository writing and history and literature.)
Since the building was meant to be temporary, there was no
benefactor after whom to name it, so they used an acronym of
the names of the original tenants, namely Veterans
Administration, Naval Science,
Electronic Research, and Graduate dining
hall. (This fact appears to be known only to those who were
around at the time.)
Thus there is a crater on
the moon which derives its name from a Harvard acronym. I
rest my case.
The Pump is advised by Owen
Gingerich, professor of astronomy and the history of science,
that the International Astronomical Union lists Van Serg not as
a crater but as a "lunar feature named by an Apollo 17
astronaut." And who could that have been? The prime suspect has
to be Harrison Schmitt (Ph.D. '64).
NASA's official website acknowledges this as fact,
stating, "Professor Hugh McKinstry, one of the leading
exploration mining geologists of this century, wrote many
educational satires under the pseudonym Nicholas Van Serg. The
name honors him and all professors who, through dedication and
ability, have infused the wisdom of the past into the
understanding of the present."
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