Eugene Merle Shoemaker also known as Gene Shoemaker, was an American geologist and one of the founders of the field of planetary science. He is best known for co-discovering the Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 with his wife Carolyn S. Shoemaker and David H. Levy. He was born on April 28, 1928 in Los Angeles, California, United States. April 28, 1928, Los Angeles, California, United States. Shoemaker received a bachelor’s degree in geology from the California Institute of Technology and a doctorate from Princeton University. He worked for the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) from 1948 to 1993, serving thereafter as scientist emeritus. In the 1960s he established the astrogeology branch of the USGS and subsequently its astrogeology centre at Flagstaff, Ariz. He was noted for helping to confirm the impact origin of the site now known as Meteor Crater in Arizona and for his work with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on lunar exploration missions. Gene Shoemaker was awarded the Wetherill Medal of the Franklin Institute in 1965, G.K. Gilbert Award of the Geological Society of America in 1983, National Medal of Science in 1992, the William Bowie Medal in 1996, the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal in 1996, and the James Craig Watson Medal in 1998.