Exploring the Unknown - NASA's History Office

T. Keith Glennan (1905–1995) was NASA’s first administrator. He was educated at Yale University and worked in
the sound motion picture industry with the Electrical Research Products Company. He was also studio manager
of Paramount Pictures and Samuel Goldwyn Studios in the 1930s. Glennan joined Columbia University’s
Division of War Research in 1942, serving through the war, first as administrator and then as director of the U.S.
Navy’s Underwater Sound Laboratories at New London, Connecticut. In 1947 he became president of the Case
Institute of Technology in Cleveland. During his administration, Case rose from a primarily local institution to
rank with the top engineering schools in the nation. From October 1950 to November 1952, Glennan served as
a member of the Atomic Energy Commission. He also served as administrator of NASA while on leave from Case,
between August 7, 1958 and January 20, 1961. After leaving NASA, he returned to the Case, where he was continued
to serve as president until 1966. See J.D. Hunley, ed., The Birth of NASA: The Diary of T. Keith Glennan
(Washington, DC: NASA SP-4105, 1993).
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James C. Hagerty (1909–1981) had been on the staff of the New York Times from 1934 to 1942, the last four years
as legislative correspondent at the paper’s Albany bureau. He served as executive assistant to New York Governor
Thomas Dewey from 1943 to 1950 and then as Dewey’s press secretary for the next two years before becoming
press secretary for President Eisenhower from 1953 to 1961. See “Miscellaneous Other Agencies,” biographical
file, NASA Historical Reference Collection.
Irwin P. Halpern served as the director of NASA’s policy analysis staff in the mid-1960s. He previously worked at
the Central Intelligence Agency on Soviet and Chinese political-military affairs and doctrine. He received a Ph.D.
in soviet history from Columbia University. See “Miscellaneous NASA,” biographical file, NASA Historical
Reference Collection.
Henry R. Hertzfeld (1943– ) is a senior research scientist at the George Washington University’s Space Policy
Institute. Previously, he served as the senior economist at NASA and as a policy analyst at the National Science
Foundation. He received a Ph.D. in economics from Temple University and a J.D. degree from George
Washington University. See “Miscellaneous NASA,” biographical file, NASA Historical Reference Collection.
Walter J. Hickel (1919– ) was governor of Alaska and then secretary of the interior from 1969 to 1970. See
Who’s Who in America 1996.
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Leonard Jaffe joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in 1948 and worked for it and its successor
organization, NASA, for thirty-three years before moving to the private sector in 1981. He primarily
worked in the field of space applications, overseeing many of NASA’s early efforts in remote sensing and satellite
communications. See “Jaffe, Leonard,” biographical file, NASA Historical Reference Collection.
Karl G. Jansky (1905–1950) was a researcher for Bell Laboratories in New Jersey who, while studying the static
that often disrupted radio communications, discovered interstellar radio waves. Thus the field of radio astronomy
was born. See “Karl G. Jansky,” biographical file, NASA Historical Reference Collection.
David S. Johnson was the Environmental Satellite Center director at the Environmental Science Service
Administration in the mid-1960s. See “Miscellaneous Other Agency,” biographical file, NASA Historical
Reference Collection.
John A. Johnson (1915– ), after completing law school at the University of Chicago in 1940, practiced in
Chicago until 1943, when he entered military service with the Navy. From 1946 to 1948, he was an assistant for
international security affairs in the Department of State. He joined the office of the general counsel of the
Department of the Air Force in 1949 and served until October 7, 1958 (for the last six years as the general counsel),
when he accepted the general counsel position at NASA. In 1963, he left the space agency to become director
of international arrangements at the Communications Satellite Corporation (Comsat). The next year, he
became a vice president of Comsat and then, in 1973, senior vice president and later chief executive officer. He
retired in 1980. See “Johnson, J.A.,” biographical file, NASA Historical Reference Collection.
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