The 1995 Draper
Prize
The 1995 Draper
Prize, the fourth since the establishment of the Prize, was
awarded to Drs. John Pierce and Harold Rosen, honored for
their pioneering inventions in communications satellite technology.
The Draper Prize was endowed in 1988
by The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc., of Cambridge,
Massachusetts, in memory of its founder and to increase public
understanding of the contributions of engineering and technology
to society. The prize is awarded annually. It is among the
world's largest engineering awards.
Dr.
Charles Stark Draper, known as the "father of inertial navigation",
led the effort that brought inertial navigation into operational
usage in aircraft, missiles, submarines, and space vehicles.
He was head of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, which later
was renamed in his honor and became an independent, not-for-profit
corporation in 1973.
For
additional information about the Draper Prize, contact the
National Academy of Engineering (NAE) awards administrator,
at 202-334-1237 or visit the NAE
Web, or contact Kathleen Granchelli, Communications Director,
Draper Laboratory, at 617-258-2605.
The Draper Prize Recipients
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John
R. Pierce began work at Bell Laboratories in 1936 on receiving
his doctorate from the California Institute of Technology;
he had received his bachelor's and master's degrees in 1933
and 1934, respectively. In the 1950s, Pierce developed theories
on passive (reflective) and active (repeater) satellites.
He tested his theories of passive satellites with the 1960
launch of the NASA-funded Bell Labs Echo project; in 1962,
Pierce and his Bell Labs colleagues launched Telstar I, the
first active communications satellite. |
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Harold
A. Rosen made satellite technology commercially viable
by enabling satellites to achieve geosynchronous orbit, whereby
a satellite orbits at the same speed as the Earth's rotation.
This enables the satellite to remain above a particular point
on Earth 24 hours a day, making it practical to build fixed
ground stations. With a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering
from Tulane University (1947) and a master's degree (1948)
and a doctorate (1951) from the California Institute of Technology,
Rosen began a career at Hughes in 1956. His theory of geosynchronous
satellites became reality in 1963 with the launch of Syncom
II, which Rosen developed at Hughes with a team of colleagues..
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