Education
Lowman earned his Bachelor of Surgery degree in Geology from in New Brunswick, New Jersey in 1953 and earned his Doctor of Philosophy in geology from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1963.
Lowman earned his Bachelor of Surgery degree in Geology from in New Brunswick, New Jersey in 1953 and earned his Doctor of Philosophy in geology from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1963.
Throughout his long career, he had worked in the fields of comparative planetology, geology, neotectonics, and remote sensing. Lowman was one of the original scientists at the Goddard Space Flight Center. He spent several years with the United States Army Ordnance Corps, and then became a field assistant with the United States Geological Survey.
In 1959, he became “the first geologist hired by National Aeronautics and Space Administration.” At Goddard, he worked with John A. O"Keefe on the origin of tektites and pre-Apollo lunar geology.
Lowman helped plan the early Apollo missions and later became involved in analyzing lunar samples and interpreting data from the Apollo 15 and Apollo 16 missions. He did early “comparative planetology,” researching what new information from the Moon and Mars could tell us about Earth.
He is considered to be the father of Earth orbital photography which led to multispectral imaging of Earth and Landsat satellite imagery. Lowman’s field work included research on ancient exposed rocks in Scotland and the Sudbury Crater in Ontario, Canada.