Named in honor of Hyron Spinrad {1934– }, a professor of astronomy at the University of California at Berkeley and a specialist in the study of both comets and galaxies. Spinrad has been a pioneer in the use of the metastable oxygen line at 630 nm to determine water production in comets and in the study of faint periodic comets at large heliocentric distances. His image-dissector scanner observations of 25 comets constitute one of the larger, uniform cometary data sets. He is currently adding to cometary knowledge with interpretation of very high dispersion CCD échelle spectroscopy and two-dimensional (interference filter) CCD photometry of brighter comets. In more than a quarter-century of teaching Spinrad has guided many outstanding students in their doctorate research. (M 18450) _ _.