"Carolyn is a warm, caring, and extremely patient woman, but her skills were better suited for a non-teaching environment." After her children had grown up and moved out, Shoemaker sought work. In her youth, she had never been interested in scientific topics. She had taken one course in geology, but found it extremely boring. However, she reportedly told others that, "listening to Gene explaining geology made what she had thought was a boring subject into an exciting and interesting pursuit of knowledge". At the suggestion of her husband, she began studying astronomy from a student at Lowell Observatory. Then she began working as a field assistant for her husband. She worked on his search program mapping and analyzing impact craters. Carolyn Shoemaker started her astronomical career in 1980, at age 51, searching for Earth-crossing asteroids and comets at California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, and the Palomar Observatory, San Diego, California. That year, Shoemaker was hired at the United States Geological Survey (USGS) as a visiting scientist in the astronomy branch, and then in 1989 began work as an astronomy research professor at Northern Arizona University. She concentrated her work on searching for comets and planet-crossing asteroids. Teamed with astronomer David H. Levy, the Shoemakers identified Shoemaker-Levy 9, a fragmented comet with an orbit that intersected that of Jupiter, on March 24, 1993. In the 1980s and 1990s, Shoemaker used film taken at the wide-field telescope at the Palomar Observatory, combined with a stereoscope, to find objects that moved against the background of fixed stars. Following recovery from the injuries she suffered in the 1997 automobile crash in which her husband was killed, she resumed her work at the Lowell Observatory with Levy. She was actively involved in astronomical observation work until at least 2002. Shoemaker had been credited with discovering or co-discovering 32 comets and over 500 asteroids. Awards and honors The Hildian asteroid 4446 Carolyn, discovered by colleague Edward Bowell at Lowell Observatory in 1985, was named in her honor. In 1988, Shoemaker received the Rittenhouse Medal of the Rittenhouse Astronomical Society. In 1995, she received the Scientist of the Year Award, also from the Rittenhouse Astronomical Society. In 1996, Shoemaker received an honorary doctorate degree from the Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona and the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal. In 1998, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences named both of the Shoemakers