Jurrie Van Der Woude

Van der Woude immigrated from Holland in 1962. He worked first at Caltech grinding rocks in the geology department. In 1963, Bruce C. Murray recognized him as a pilot (from Holland's air force) grinding rocks in the basement and put him to work one level deeper developing film and testing lenses for JPL's Lunar Lab for a few years. He worked his way to a position as NASA's media relations specialist in providing images, information, and interview scheduling to the press from Mariner 4's 21-image flyby of Mars in 1965, Voyagers' grand tours of the solar system, and Mars rovers in the 2000s.