William Alison Anders (17 October 1933 – 7 June 2024) was a United States Air Force (USAF) major general, electrical engineer, nuclear engineer, NASA astronaut, and businessman. In December 1968, he was a member of the crew of Apollo 8, the first three people to leave low-Earth orbit and travel to the Moon. Along with fellow astronauts Frank Borman and Jim Lovell, he circled the Moon ten times, and broadcast live images and commentary back to Earth, including the Christmas Eve Genesis reading. During one of the mission's lunar orbits, he took the iconic Earthrise photograph.
A 1955 graduate of the United States Naval Academy, Anders was commissioned a second lieutenant in the USAF the same year and became a fighter pilot flying Northrop F-89 Scorpions equipped with AIR-2A nuclear-tipped air-to-air rockets. In 1962, he earned a Master of Science degree in nuclear engineering at the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) of Air University, and was sent to the Air Force Weapons Laboratory to manage the technical aspects of the service's nuclear reactor programs.