Named in honor of John Aloysius O’Keefe (1916–2000), American astronomer and a leading figure in establishing the Theoretical Division of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. He is renowned for his discovery of the “pear shape” of the gravitational field of the earth from observations of the first artificial satellites. He is one of the leading students of tektites and has stimulated much interest and research on these natural glasses and played a key role in helping to found the astrogeology program of the U.S. Geological Survey. (M 29671) _ _.