AKA Ivan Alexander Getting

Born: 18-Jan-1912
Birthplace: New York City
Died: 11-Oct-2003
Location of death: Coronado, CA
Cause of death: unspecified

Gender: Male
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Inventor, Physicist

Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Global Positioning System

Military service: US Air Force (1950-51)

As president of Aerospace Corp., founded by the US Air Force, physicist Ivan Getting helped develop what became the Global Positioning System (GPS), a multi-satellite military targeting program which has been adapted to certain civilian applications. He studied under Karl T. Compton and E. Arthur Milne, and was involved in early development of anti-aircraft radar, high-powered chemical lasers, microwave tracking fire control radar, nuclear instrumentation, and the Hawk, Polaris, and Sparrow III missile systems.

Wife: Dorothea Getting (d. 1976)
Son: Ivan Getting, Jr. (geophysicist)
Daughter: Nancy Getting (counselor)
Son: Peter Getting (physiologist)
Wife: Helen Griggs Getting

    University: BS Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1933)
    University: PhD Astrophysics, Oxford University (1935)
    Scholar: Harvard University (1935-40)
    Scholar: Radiation Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1940-45)
    Professor: Electrical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1945-50)

    The Aerospace Corporation President (1960-78)
    Raytheon VP Research and Engineering (1951-60)
    Member of the Board of Northrop
    American Academy of Arts and Sciences
    American Physical Society
    IEEE President (1978)
    Institute of Radio Engineers
    International Academy of Astronautics
    National Academy of Engineering
    National Research Council
    Charles Stark Draper Prize 2003 (with Bradford W. Parkinson)
    National Inventors Hall of Fame 2004
    Rhodes Scholarship
    Slovak Ancestry

Author of books:
All in A Lifetime: Science in the Defense of Democracy (1989)

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