June 2 (UPI) — Google is celebrating astronomer, veteran and gay rights activist Dr. Frank Kameny with a new Doodle in honor of Pride Month.
Google’s homepage features artwork of Kameny wearing a lei in front of the Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C.
Kameny attended Queens College in New York City to study physics at 15-years-old before seeing combat in World War II. He then obtained a doctorate in astronomy at Harvard University after coming home.
Kameny became an astronomer with the Army Map service, but was fired months later after an executive order banned LGBTQ individuals from federal employment.
The astronomer then sued the federal government and filed the first gay rights appeal to the Supreme Court in 1961, which was denied. The Civil Service Commission reversed the ban in 1975.
Kameny went on to organize one of the U.S.’s first gay rights advocacy groups and successfully challenged the American Psychiatric Association’s definition of homosexuality as a mental disorder.
Kameny, who died at the age of 86 in 2011, received a formal apology from the government in 2009.
