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 William H. Pickering was an electrical engineer who directed
the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at the California Institute of Technology
(Caltech) from 1954 to 1976. Under Pickering's
leadership, JPL developed America's
first satellite (Explorer I) and the first U.S. space probe to escape Earth's
gravity (Pioneer IV). Pickering
also played an important role in NASA's Mariner flights to Mars and Venus, the
Ranger missions to the moon, and the Surveyor lunar landings.
Early Life
William Hayward Pickering was born in Mount
Victoria, Wellington, New Zealand
on December 24, 1910. After his mother died when he was six years old, young
William was sent to live with his grandparents in Havelock. While his father, a pharmacist,
left New Zealand to build a
new life, William H. Pickering attended the old primary school of Ernest Rutherford, the father of nuclear physics. Later,
Pickering enrolled at Wellington
College, a secondary school in Mount Victoria.
There, he was inspired by a mathematics instructor who founded the school's
observatory and encouraged Pickering
to look skyward. At Wellington, Pickering also developed an interest in radio
signals, using Morse code to communicate with other radio operators around the
world.
From Canterbury College to Caltech
After high school, William H. Pickering enrolled at historic
Canterbury College
(now the University of Canterbury) in Christchurch,
New Zealand. He
completed one year of study there before an uncle who had lived in California encouraged him to apply to Caltech, a new
school in Pasadena
with a strong reputation in science and engineering. At Caltech, Pickering earned a Bachelor's
degree (1932) and Master's degree (1933) in electrical engineering. He also
received a Ph.D. in physics in 1936 before joining the Caltech faculty as an
instructor in electrical engineering. Put in charge of the school's radio and
electronics program, Pickering
was also appointed to the Scientific Advisory Board of the U.S. Army Air Corps,
forerunner to the U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF).
Jets, Ramjets, and Rockets
During World War II, William H. Pickering joined Caltech's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a new aeronautical research facility that
would later play a large part in America's space program. Although
JPL began with the word "jet", scientists of the mid-1940s often referred to
rockets as "jets" or "ramjets". In his part-time role with JPL, Pickering led wartime efforts
in telemetry and electronics. He also participated in studies of Nazi Germany's
V2 rocket, the world's first ballistic missile. After the war, Pickering went
to work for JPL full-time as project manager for Corporal, the first
operational missile developed by the California-based laboratory, and the first
U.S. guided weapon to carry a nuclear warhead.
The Sputnik Crisis
In 1954, William Pickering was named director of the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory. A year later, the United
States and the Soviet Union
declared their intentions to develop satellites, a move that would send the
Cold War into outer space. In the fall of 1957, the U.S.S.R. alarmed Western observers
with the success of Sputnik 1 and Sputnik 2. In response, the U.S. National
Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) – the forerunner to NASA -
established a Special Committee on Space Technology, naming named Pickering to the
16-member group. Back at JPL, Pickering
re-doubled his efforts with the Explorer program, the U.S. response to the Soviet
Union's success. Although a test launch of December 7, 1957 ended
in disaster, Explorer 1 was successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida
on January 31, 1958 – less than four months after Sputnik.
Editor's Note: Part 2 of this biography will run later this month, right here on CR4.
Resources:
http://history.nasa.gov/sputnik/pickering.html
http://www.nzedge.com/heroes/pickering.html
http://cr4.globalspec.com/blogentry/4033
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hayward_Pickering
http://www.caltech.edu/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Canterbury
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_Propulsion_Laboratory
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