Gordon Shepherd received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from the University of Saskatchewan and his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. He was appointed Assistant Professor at the University of Saskatchewan at the beginning of the International Geophysical Year and his techniques on the interferometric spectroscopy of the aurora soon expanded into Canada's new rocket program; he was Project Scientist for flights into the aurora, at Fort Churchill and Cape Parry.
He became Principal Investigator for the Red Line Photometer on the Canadian ISIS-II satellite, launched in 1971 and mapped the red aurora that occurs on the Earth's dayside. Over the next 20 years he developed a technique for measuring high altitude winds that was implemented in the Wind Imaging Interferometer (WINDII) and launched on NASA's Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite in 1991. He is currently Director of the Centre for Research in Earth and Space Science at York University; he was Chair of the Executive Committee for the COSPAR 2008 Scientific Assembly. His career has spanned the 50 years that is the subject of this work.
