Lloyd Motz

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Lloyd Motz (1909, Susquehanna, Pennsylvania—March 14, 2004, New York City) was an American astronomer. Born in Pennsylvania, Motz graduated from the City College of New York 1930 and earned a Ph.D. in physics from Columbia University in 1936. Motz began teaching at Columbia the same year he completed his Ph.D., but over the years also taught courses at the City College of New York, Queens College, Polytechnic University, and The New School. From 1959 to 1992 he mentored in a program he initiated, Columbia's Saturday Morning Science Honors Program for high school students. College courses he taught included introductory astronomy, astronomical physics, and celestial mechanics. During the 1970s he hosted a television program, Exploration of the Universe. He founded the Phi Beta Kappa chapter at Columbia's School of General Studies.

Motz was noted for having defeated Enrico Fermi in a tennis match, and then discussing not his strategy (which was to play the net), but to give a speech on how the conservation of momentum applied to tennis balls and the tightness of strings on the racquets.

A scholarship was established at Columbia in Motz's honor in 1996.

Lloyd Motz was the author of 21 books on astronomy, including The Story of Astronomy (ISBN 0738205869) and The Constellations (1988, ISBN 0385176007). Some of his books were translated into other languages.

He died in 2004 in New York City.