William Roger Ward

William R. Ward, 74, died September 20th 2018 in Prescott, AZ, after a battle with a malignant brain tumor. William was born January 11, 1944, in Kansas City, Kansas, the second son of John K. and Geraldine M. Ward. William is survived by his loving wife Sandra Kay Ward, two sons Brad and Scott, and daughter Stephanie. Ward graduated with honors from the University of Missouri at Kansas City with a BS in science and a BS in mathematics in 1968, and received a Ph.D. from CalTech in 1973. He then accepted a position as faculty at The Center of Astrophysics at Harvard University. He later worked for the Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena, CA from 1977 until 1998, before relocating to Colorado and becoming a senior research scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences, in addition to receiving many other professional honors, and was the author of over 100 research papers throughout his career, including development of a now widely accepted theory on the formation of the Earth’s moon. He retired from the Southwest Research Insitute in 2016 and relocated to Prescott. He will be greatly missed by his family and his many colleagues in the planetary sciences.