Eugene Merle Shoemaker Eugene Merle Shoemaker Eugene Merle Shoemaker (April 28, 1928 – July 18, 1997), 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. This comet hit Jupiter in July 1994: the impact was televised around the world. Shoemaker was also well known for his studies of terrestrial craters, such as Barringer Meteor Crater in Arizona. Shoemaker was the first scientist to conclude that these craters were caused by meteor impact.
Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 carbon disulfide persisted in the atmosphere for at least fourteen months after the collisions, with a considerable amount of ammonia being present in the stratosphere as opposed to its normal location in the troposphere. Counterintuitively, the atmospheric temperature dropped to normal levels much more quickly at the larger impact sites than at the smaller sites: at the larger impact sites, temperatures were elevated over a region wide, but dropped back to normal levels within a week of the impact. At smaller sites, temperatures higher than the surroundings persisted for almost two weeks. Global stratospheric temperatures rose immediately after the impacts,