Named in memory of Walter Orr Roberts (1915–1990), from 1960 to 1970 the founding director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. In the early 1940s he established the Harvard College Observatory’s Fremont Pass Station (which later became the University of Colorado’s High Altitude Observatory), where he made solar observations with the first coronagraph in the western hemisphere. His interests soon broadened from solar physics to climatic research in general, and he served as president (and later president emeritus) of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. His final major activity was the Greenhouse Glasnost project between scientists in the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. (M 16885) _ _.