Summary: Dr. Harrison Schmitt has the diverse experience of a geologist, pilot, astronaut, administrator, businessman, writer, and U. S. Senator. He received his B. S. from Caltech, studied as a Fulbright Scholar at Oslo, attended graduate school at Harvard and received his Ph.D. in geology in 1964. Selected for the Scientist-Astronaut program in 1965, Schmitt organized the lunar science training for the Apollo Astronauts, represented the crews during the development of hardware and procedures for lunar surface exploration, and oversaw the final preparation of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module Descent Stage. He served as Lunar Module Pilot for Apollo 17 -- the last Apollo mission to the moon. On December 11, 1972, he landed in the Valley of Taurus-Littrow as the only scientist and the last of the only 12 humans to stand on the Moon. In 1975, Harrison Schmitt was elected to a six-year term in the U.S. Senate, the only “natural scientist” in the Senate since Thomas Jefferson was Vice-President of the United States. He was a member of the Senate Commerce, Banking, Appropriations, Intelligence, and Ethics Committees and held the position of Chairman of the Commerce Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space and of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. He later served on the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the President’s Commission on Ethics Law Reform, the Army Science Board, as Co-Chairman of the International Observer Group for the 1992 Romanian elections, and as Vice Chairman of the U.S. delegation to the 1992 World Administrative Radio Conference in Spain. Schmitt has been Chairman of the NASA Advisory Council since November 2005, leading its deliberations on issues related to Aeronautics, Audit and Finance, Biomedicine, Exploration (systems development), Human Capital, Science, and Space Operations. He presently is Chair Emeritus of The Annapolis Center (risk assessment) and is Adjunct Professor of Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Current board memberships include Orbital Sciences Corporation, Edenspace Systems Corporation, and PhDx Systems, Inc., and, as a retired Director, he is a Member of the Corporation of the Draper Laboratory. He also has served as a member of the Energy Department’s Laboratory Operations Board. In 1997, Schmitt co-founded and is Chairman of Interlune-Intermars Initiative, Inc., advancing the private sector’s acquisition of lunar resources and Helium-3 fusion power and clinical use of medical isotopes produced by fusion-related processes. He is the author of, “Return to the Moon” (2006 Springer-Praxis) that describes a private enterprise approach to providing lunar helium-3 fusion energy resources for use on Earth.
