Pickering, William H. (1910–2004)
Director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
for the first two decades of the Space Age. Pickering obtained his B.S.
and M.S. in electrical engineering, then a Ph.D. in physics from the California
Institute of Technology before becoming a professor of electrical engineering
there in 1946. In 1944 he organized the electronics efforts at JPL to support
guided missile research and development, becoming project manager for the
Corporal, the first operational missile
to come out of JPL. He served as JPL's director (1954–76), overseeing
development of the first American satellite (Explorer
1), the first successful American circumlunar space probe (Pioneer
4), the Mariner flights to Venus
and Mars in the early to mid-1960s, the Ranger
photographic missions to the Moon in 1964–65, and the Surveyor
lunar landings of 1966–67.
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