Feb 8 2008
From The Space Library
Robert Jastrow, one of NASA’s founding administrators and a popular commentator on NASA’s missions to the Moon, died from complications of pneumonia at the age of 82. Jastrow had spent his early career at Yale and at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. When NASA formed in 1958, Jastrow had become Chief of the Theoretical Division. In 1961 he had become Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), where he had worked on the Pioneer, Voyager, and Galileo probes. He had held positions at Columbia University and Dartmouth College before becoming chair of the Mount Wilson Institute in 1992. Jastrow had cofounded the George C. Marshall Institute in 1984 and still held the position of Chair Emeritus of the Institute at the time of his death. The public knew Jastrow well for his ability to explain science and space exploration in easily understood terms. Besides being a frequent guest on network television, he was the author of the 1967 best seller Red Giants and White Dwarfs and of the controversial How To Make Nuclear Weapons Obsolete—the 1985 defense of President Ronald W. Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative. Over the course of his career, Jastrow had received the NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement, the Arthur S. Fleming Award for Outstanding Service to the U.S. Government, and the Columbia University Medal of Excellence.
John Schwartz, “Robert Jastrow, Who Made Space Understandable, Dies at 82,” New York Times, 12 February 2008; Thomas H. Maugh II, “Robert Jastrow, 82; Astrophysicist Helped Shape NASA’s Space Exploration,” Los Angeles Times, 17 February 2008.
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