Obituary of Bernard Chovitz

Bernard Chovitz left us on April 25,2025.  He has been a geodesist, an important one, active mostly in the second half of the last century, contributing to the impetuous development of Geodesy in that period. First of all he served our science as official of the NOAA institution.

On the other hand he belongs to the group of scientists that raised the scientific level of Geodesy, fostering its transition from an old  two-dimensional world with a height on top of it, to a new three-dimensional and then four-dimensional vision , enforced by technological developments, in particular the opening of the spatial era. So his work has to be considered as part of that produced by geodetic giants, like Hotine, Marussi and later Grafarend, Grossman, Zund.

But his activity has been by no means restricted to the geometric branch of Geodesy; on the contrary he contributed to the gravity field analysis and data combination, including satellite geodetic data, by modern statistical tools. In this way he joined the group of scientists that have created the modern  theory of gravity field prediction, Moritz, Rapp, Tscherning and others.

Just to close the circle of geodetic thinking, he has contributed too to the theory of reference systems, a must in the geodetic environment, with fathers like Baarda, Bjerhammar, Meissl and sons like Blaha, Boucher, Dermanis and others. To get an idea of the deep insight of Chovitz  into geodetic science, it is amazing to read his report on “Geodetic Theory” published on Reviews of Geophysics and Space Physics, number of July 1975. There you can realize how wide and clear has been his comprehension of Geodesy. For that reason the geodetic community, through its  International Association of Geodesy, need to honor Bernard Chovitz’ figure and acknowledge his contribution to our science.

Fernando Sansò

Interview / Recording of Bernard Chovitz (2019, AGU), 16 minutes