Gerard K. O'Neill

Gerard Kitchen O'Neill was an American physicist and space activist. As a faculty member of Princeton University, he invented a device called the particle storage ring for high-energy physics experiments. Later, he invented a magnetic launcher called the mass driver. In the 1970s, he developed a plan to build human settlements in outer space, including a space habitat design known as the O'Neill cylinder. He founded the Space Studies Institute, an organization devoted to funding research into space manufacturing and colonization.

6 February 1927

Born on the same birth day (6 February): Ahmad-Jabir Ahmadov • Akira Yamaoka • Anna Diop • António Vieira • Carlos Rogers (basketball) • Charlie Coles • Harry Haywood • J. E. B. Stuart • John B. Gordon • Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz • Kevon Looney • Louis I, Landgrave of Hesse • María Teresa Vera • Megan Gallagher • Patrick Russell (herpetologist) • Rip Torn • Sam McQueen • Tommy Roberts (designer) • Walker Edmiston • William M. Evarts

Born in the same month (February 1927): Doris Sams • Galway Kinnell • Hubert de Givenchy • Kenneth Anger • Peter Whittle (mathematician) • Ralph Stanley • Richard A. Long • Robert Allen (song composer) • Rolf Landauer • Sidney Poitier • Yehoshua Neuwirth