Personal Info
- Country of residence: United States
Information
Issam Nemer, a Palestinian-American
astronomer, was born in Jenin in 1926 and died on July 15, 2005 in Houston,
USA. He worked for the American Space Agency NASA, and participated in the
launch of the Apollo 11 spacecraft. ) which was the first spacecraft to land on
the surface of the moon in 1969, and it is known that he sent a stone to the
moon and engraved the name of his city, Jenin, with this trip.
Origin and family
Issam Al-Nimr was born in the city
of Jenin in 1926, to a Palestinian family whose origins go back to the city of
Tubas, and his father, Dr. Saeed Al-Nimr, is considered one of the first
Palestinians to study medicine and practice the profession in Palestine, where
he graduated as a doctor in 1914 and worked as an officer in the Ottoman army
during the First World War. His mother, Ramzia Al-Nimr, died when he was two
years old, and his aunt, Thuraya Al-Nimr, took care of the family. He has five
brothers and four sisters, including Awni Al-Nimr, who worked as a Kuwaiti
doctor, and Fathi Al-Nimr, who established the Jenin Electricity Project.
During his studies, Issam El-Nimr
married an Austrian woman, with whom he had four children, as the family
continued to live in the United States.
Professional biography
Issam Al-Nimr received his primary
education in the schools of the city of Jenin and finished secondary school at
Al-Najah National School in Nablus, then joined the University of Utah in the
United States in 1949, and graduated in 1953 in engineering sciences. He
continued his postgraduate studies at New York University, where he obtained a
Ph.D. with a specialization in the field of quantitative calculations. Until
1955, he worked as a development engineer at the International Company in
Chicago. In 1960, he joined the Rocket Dean Company, which manufactures giant
rocket engines in California. He worked in the development of internal
combustion engines, and in 1968 he moved to the US Space Agency “NASA” in
Houston, the capital of the state of Texas, and took over the leadership of the
test group for the lunar vehicle, the “Luna” model. And it was dr. Essam is
among the scientists who give the final signal to launch spacecraft, as he
participated in the launch of the Apollo vehicles, including Apollo 11, which
was the first spacecraft to land on the moon in 1969.
In an interview with him published
in 1993 in the weekly newspaper "Nablus", he confirmed that he had
handed the Apollo 11 astronauts a small stone with "Jenin" written on
it, and that this stone is now on the surface of the moon. When asked about the
reason for writing Jenin and not Palestine also on the stone? "So we can
get him there," he replied, laughing. In 1972, on his first visit to the
homeland, Al-Nimr presented the municipality of Jenin with a picture, donated to
the people of the city of Jenin, and signed by the Apollo 11 astronauts.
He worked for Aramco from 1978 until
his retirement in 1985. He died in July 2005 in Houston, Texas.
source
Achievements and Awards
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