Russell Merle Genet

Who is Russell Merle Genet?

Russell Merle Genet is an American research scholar and astronomer, who specializes in photometric observations and analysis of very short-period eclipsing binary stars.

Between 1964 and 1968 he worked as a rocket scientist for Space and Missile Systems, San Bernardino, California. Between 1969 and 1975 he worked as a mathematical analyst for Aerospace Guidance System Center, Newark, Ohio. Since then until 1990 he worked as a research supervisor for Air Force Human Resources Laboratory, Dayton, Ohio, and Mesa, Arizona.

In 1979 he founded the Fairborn Observatory, which he later moved to Mount Hopkins, Arizona, and worked there until 1993. He was also its first director, until 1989. Genet and his colleagues developed robotic telescopes there. It became the first totally automatic robotic observatory in the world. It appeared in the documentary of the Public Broadcasting Service The Perfect Stargazer. He also established the magazine IAPPP Communications, the first international astronomical photometry journal.