Pluto has been in the news a lot lately. For something that was recently demoted from being a planet, it's not doing too shabby.

We have finally seen pictures of the distant world. There are mountains! There is ice! (Well, methane ice, but that's something.) And here are Pluto's moons, Charon, Hydra, Nix, Kerberos and Styx! (For those up on their Greek mythology, that's a gloomy bunch...)

So whom do we have to thank for this? Obviously, the New Horizons probe, the one out there in outer space. But New Horizons would not be possible without its lead researcher, Alan Stern, Jew.

Recognizing that this is our best chance to fly by Pluto for a good 200 years, Stern started to lobby NASA in the early 1990s. When that fell through because of the cost, he turned to the Russians. That didn't materialize as well, but Stern continued to push, and got his NASA breakthrough.

New Horizions have been in flight since 2006, only now reaching the outer edges of the Solar System. The wait has been long... but thanks to Stern, mankind doesn't need to wait another two centuries to finally see Pluto.