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leW alleN, Jr.
1925–2010
elected in 1978
“For pioneering work in combining technologies of space and
information processing to strengthen the nation.”
By JoHN r. casaNi
l EW ALLEN, JR.—a towering figure in all respects—died
on January 4, 2010, at his home in Potomac falls, Virginia. He
devoted 36 years of service to the nation in the U.s. air force,
becoming a four-star general and the tenth U.s. air force chief
of staff. When he retired from the air force in 1982, he agreed
to become director of the National aeronautics and space
administration’s (Nasa) Jet Propulsion laboratory (JPl). in
1990 he left JPl and served as chairman of the board of the
charles stark draper laboratory in Boston. Throughout his
long and productive life, lew allen, Jr., was recognized and
honored not only for his technical knowledge but also for
his wide-ranging intelligence, great integrity, and profound
vision. He possessed strong, engaging leadership qualities—a
“steady steel hand in a velvet glove,” as one colleague put it.
lew allen was born in Miami, florida, on september 30,
1925, and grew up in gainesville, Texas. He entered the U.s.
Military academy at West Point in 1943, graduating in 1946
with a bachelor of science degree, a commission as a second
lieutenant, and pilot wings. after completing multiengine
flight training, he was assigned to Strategic Air Command’s
7th Bombardment Group at Fort Worth Army Airfield (later
renamed Carswell Air Force Base), where he flew B-29s and
B-36s and served in positions related to nuclear weaponry. in
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1950 he entered the University of illinois for graduate training
in nuclear physics and was awarded a master of science degree
in 1952 and a Ph.d. in physics in 1954. His thesis was on high-
energy photonuclear reactions.
allen’s air force career was characterized by a focus on
technology, science, and steadily higher levels of assignments.
at los alamos National laboratory, he measured the cross
section of neutrons coming out of nuclear explosions. at
Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico, he was science advisor to
the Physics division of the air force special Weapons center
from 1957 to 1961. The Van allen belts had been discovered
by the nation’s first satellite, Explorer 1, and there was concern
that nuclear weapons exploded in space might blank out
civilian and military communications. Lew Allen defined a
program to measure this effect, directing an experiment that
flew a series of high-altitude rockets to measure electrons
trapped in the geomagnetic field after an exoatmospheric
nuclear blast. In December 1961 he moved to the Office of
the Secretary of Defense, Space Technology Office, in the
directorate of research and engineering, in Washington, d.c.
He spent 1965 to 1973 in service to the Office of the Secretary
of the Air Force, first in Los Angeles and then at the Pentagon
as deputy director of space systems, becoming director in June
1969. in 1970–1971 he was back in los angeles as assistant
to the director of special projects and then director. He then
served as chief of staff for the air force systems command at
andrews air force Base in Maryland.
No doubt in recognition of his leadership abilities and
reputation of integrity, lt. gen. allen was appointed deputy
to the director of central intelligence for the intelligence
community in Washington, d.c., in 1973. during a memorial
tribute at JPl on april 7, 2010, albert Wheelon, retired chief
executive officer of Hughes Aircraft Corporation and a life
trustee on caltech’s Board of Trustees, remarked that allen was
“a straight shooter. Many thought of him as the straightest of
the straight shooters. . . . [He] made an enormous contribution
to reconnaissance and general intelligence.” in august 1973,
allen was named director of the National security agency
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leW alleN, Jr.
(Nsa) and chief of the central security service at fort george
g. Meade, in Maryland, by President richard M. Nixon.
According to Albert Wheelon, “his job was to bring that
organization to heel and to calm the concern that congress
had about it. He was remarkably successful in this difficult
assignment.” Lew Allen was to become the first NSA director
to testify before a U.s. House of representatives, and then
a U.s. senate, committee, in open session, in 1975. When he
departed the Nsa in 1977, he was named commander of the
air force systems command. He received his fourth star on
august 1, 1977.
starting in april 1978, allen served as vice chief of staff
of the air force, becoming chief of staff in July of the same
year. He was then responsible for the entire U.s. air force.
according to a statement on allen’s passing by the secretary of
Air Force Public Affairs, General Allen “left an indelible mark
on the air force.” Honoring tradition, allen made The U.S.
Air Force (popularly known as “Off We Go into the Wild Blue
Yonder”) the service’s official song (courtesy of the copyright
holder). encouraging education, allen created Project Warrior,
a professional development program for airmen, calling for
“the continuing study of military history, combat leadership,
the principles of war, and the applications of air power.”
general lew allen retired from the air force in July 1982.
That year JPl was searching for its eighth director. a division of
caltech and a principal center for robotic planetary exploration
for Nasa, JPl had had a string of brilliant deep-space mission
successes under William Pickering (director, 1954–1976); but
Nasa’s planetary budget was cut in 1981, and JPl faced
considerably reduced funding. Nasa administrator James
M. Beggs even proposed terminating the nation’s planetary
exploration program altogether, making JPL “surplus to our
needs.”
caltech began seeking other sources of funds, considering
the addition of defense work to JPl’s tasks. Nominated as
JPl director, with a concurrent position as vice president of
caltech, allen brought to JPl his extensive experience with
military space missions and technology. This was seen as a
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great boon for developing JPl’s defense work, and so it was.
But dr. allen, as he was known at JPl and caltech, brought
much more than this to his new position. as larry dumas,
JPl’s deputy director from 1992 to 2001, remembers him, lew
Allen was “an unassuming and soft-spoken gentleman with
the knack of asking deceptively simple questions that could
absolutely confound the brightest scientist or engineer. it takes
a deep understanding of the subject to be able to do that.”
dr. allen was a new-technology enthusiast. Terry cole,
appointed JPl’s chief technologist in 1980, was also a research
associate in chemistry at caltech. cole and allen collaborated
on initiating, nourishing, and finally instantiating JPL’s
Microdevices laboratory (Mdl), which grew into a research,
development, and fabrication facility for highly capable,
miniaturized devices for space missions. cole described the
beginnings of Mdl in a 1996 interview for the oral History
Project of the caltech archives. at a meeting of the caltech
Trustees JPl committee with Burton i. edelson, Nasa associate
administrator for space sciences, edelson discussed a letter he
had received from caltech Trustee Mary scranton in which she
asked if there was any new role that JPl could play in addition
to its work in solar system exploration. edelson proposed that
JPl become a microelectronics center of excellence for all of
Nasa.
dr. allen asked cole to investigate the possibility and report
on what kind of hiring and investment would be needed and
to come up with a plan. The approach was to define an area
or areas where JPL would be unique. “It was clear,” Cole
said, “that we couldn’t compete with industry in producing
computer chips or memory chips. . . . it was senseless to do
that because we were forbidden, since we’re a government-
sponsored lab, to compete with industry. and the defense
department was investing billions of dollars in improving
conventional electronics.”
Cole and the colleagues he consulted identified four areas
of interest. first, they discerned that there were areas of the
electromagnetic spectrum where detectors that would be
useful in remote sensing were inadequate or nonexistent. They
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leW alleN, Jr.
discussed the idea of fabricating custom microchips (very
large-scale integrated circuits) that would move technology
from academic research into reality in a “silicon foundry.”
a third area was photonics: using lasers for remote sensing
and eventually interplanetary communication. The fourth
area was collective computational behavior: neural nets and
parallel computing. Allen pointed out that the NASA Office
of space science did not have a charter within Nasa to
develop technology, so while edelson might support the idea,
JPl would have to sell the rest of Nasa on it. according to
Cole, when he and Allen finally did make their presentation
at Nasa headquarters, the deputy administrator (dale d.
Myers) “turned to Lew Allen and said, ‘Lew, do we really need
this?’ And Lew said, ‘Yes, we really need this. It’s important
for NASA.’ And he said ‘Done.’ . . . Lew Allen carried a
tremendous reputation with him when he became director of
the laboratory. and he was so well known in Washington that
his word was really solid platinum.”
In 1984, Terry Cole recruited Carl Kukkonen from the Ford
research laboratory in dearborn, Michigan, to be director
of an advanced microelectronics program. Work in parallel
computer architecture was growing at caltech and, said
Kukkonen, “Dr. Allen wanted JPL to work closely with [the
caltech] campus on this new computing technology.” The
strategic defense initiative, begun around this time, was to
use advanced technology to track and intercept soviet missiles.
Tracking objects simultaneously was a perfect task for parallel
computing. JPl scientists and engineers also wanted access to
a supercomputer. Allen agreed to find funding for a used Cray
xMP, and eventually supercomputing became a widely used
tool at JPL. As Kukkonen said, “As the technology advanced,
parallel computing and supercomputing merged into a single
organization—all started by dr. allen.” Nasa saw the value
and became a prime sponsor of advanced computing and
eventually also provided research and development (R&D)
funding for advanced infrared, submillimeter, ultraviolet, and
visible sensors for imaging; advanced lasers for sensing; and
technology to miniaturize spacecraft. The strategic defense
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Initiative’s Innovative Science and Technology Office
sponsored unclassified, high-risk, high-payoff R&D at both
JPl and caltech. Nasa supported the center of excellence
at JPl by providing funds for a building to provide a state-
of-the-art R&D facility. Groundbreaking for what became the
Mdl at JPl was on January 21, 1987, and the facility became
fully operational in 1990. at the memorial tribute at JPl in
april 2010, charles elachi, director of JPl, called the Mdl a
major contribution by Lew Allen: “He really had the vision,
20, 25 years ago, that this was going to be a very important
field for JPL.” Elachi went on to cite a new European mission—
Herschel/Planck—looking at the origin of the universe using
MDL-developed focal plane submillimeter detectors, “which
would have been unthinkable 10 years ago.”
elachi described another major contribution by allen: his
support for new research and the technology to enable it. in
1984 two astronomers, following up on data from the infrared
astronomical satellite that revealed unusual amounts of
infrared radiation from Beta Pictoris (implying the existence of
orbiting solid material), obtained an image of a circumstellar
disc using a ground-based telescope. Though it was not clear
if there actually were planets around the star, the disc was the
first ever clearly seen in astronomical photographs. Recalled
Elachi, “Dr. Allen said, ‘This is going to be a great field in the
future and i want JPl to be the leader. i’m going to invest our
internal money into making that happen.’” allen directed a
substantial portion of discretionary funds toward further
study of extrasolar planets.
during lew allen’s tenure as JPl director, he oversaw the
launch of the Galileo mission to Jupiter, which provided the
first observations of an asteroid with a moon and imaged a
comet colliding with Jupiter; Magellan to Venus, which used
synthetic aperture radar to map the planet and its gravity
field; the Voyager 2 flybys of Uranus and Neptune; and the
Infrared Astronomy Satellite, the first space-based telescope
to survey the universe in infrared. He gracefully handled the
concerns at JPl and at the campus about a retired general
running a civilian space laboratory and quickly won over
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leW alleN, Jr.
both populations. He helped JPl obtain defense-related work
that bolstered both technical work and morale at a time when
Nasa’s planetary exploration program was declining. When
the program started to rebound, he helped JPl respond with
vigor and new levels of expertise. eventually JPl even ended
up turning away more defense work as the laboratory bumped
up against infrastructure limitations.
Mention should be made of lew allen’s interest in and
support of students. The summer Undergraduate research
fellowship (sUrf) program at caltech was created in 1979.
sUrf is modeled on the grant-seeking process: Undergraduates
collaborate with mentors to define a project prior to writing a
research proposal; a faculty committee reviews the proposals
and recommends awards. students then work on their projects
over 10 weeks in the summer, submit technical papers, and give
oral presentations. allen thought it was a great idea for JPl, too,
and with participation of JPl chief Technologist Terry cole,
a companion sUrf program was initiated at the laboratory.
after allen retired from JPl, he continued as a member of the
sUrf board for three years and chaired it for a year. He and
his wife Barbara provided money each year to fund a sUrf
student summer stipend and continued this after moving
to the east coast. such direct encouragement of graduate
students would not have been a surprise to his children. in
the eulogy given by James (Jimmy) allen, the youngest of
five offspring, at Arlington National Cemetery, emphasis was
placed on how the children were imbued by their father with
“an endless thirst for knowledge. . . . One of [Dad’s] proudest
accomplishments was to be named outstanding graduate of
every academic institution he attended: it was recognition for
a life of learning.”
Throughout his life, lew allen undertook concurrent
assignments and tasks. in 1987 he chaired the committee
on science, engineering, and Public Policy, a joint unit of
the National academy of sciences, the National academy of
engineering, and the institute of Medicine. The committee’s
report, Balancing the National Interest: U.S. National Security
Export Controls and Global Economic Competition, caused a stir
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with its conclusion: that export control laws had impeded U.s.
trade in high-technology products while making an unclear
and variable contribution to national security. The report was
later seen as a major contribution to a dialogue that led to
removal of some export restrictions and to improvement of
the U.s. position in export control collaboration with NaTo
allies and other friendly nations.
from 1989 to 1995, allen was a member of the President’s
foreign intelligence advisory Board and the intelligence
oversight Board, and as former U.s. air force chief of staff, he
continued to be active in the military intelligence community,
serving as a member of the National security agency advisory
Board. He was a member of the National academy of sciences
committee on international security and arms control. He
served on the Keck Foundation’s board at the request of
Howard Keck and on the California Association for Research
in astronomy board that oversaw construction of (and now
operates) the Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. He
participated in meetings in 1986–1987 on possible U.s.–soviet
cooperation in space missions. allen served on the council on
foreign relations. in 1988 he became chairman of the Board of
directors for the charles stark draper laboratory and was a
member of the Board of Trustees for aerospace corporation.
In 1989 he joined the Scientific Advisory Committee of General
Motors. also in 1989 he was elected to the National academy
of engineering and served on a number of its committees.
in 1990 he became a member of the secretary of energy’s
advisory Board. allen also served as regional chairman of
United Way for several years. He held the position of senior
faculty associate at caltech until 1997.
Before retiring from JPl at the end of 1990, allen made
another major contribution to the nation’s space program.
as is well known now, the Hubble space Telescope was
launched with a flaw in its primary mirror that prevented
proper focusing. lew allen was asked by Nasa to lead the
optical systems failure review Board. James Breckinridge,
technical advisor to Dr. Allen, recalled that “Dr. Allen’s
technical knowledge of optical engineering was far greater
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leW alleN, Jr.
than any one of us imagined. He . . . fully understood both the
engineering implications and the impact to the astronomical
sciences community. . . . during our meetings, dr. allen took
no notes but relied on his excellent memory to recall in-depth
details during discussions. He identified all ambiguities in
the presentations by the contractor, listened intently to the
board members, and resolved issues in real time.” The report
was issued in November 1990, the board having identified
precisely the errors that led to the flawed optics. The finding
enabled fabrication of corrective optics in JPl’s Wide-field and
Planetary camera 2, which was installed during an astronaut-
servicing mission in 1993. finally, Hubble was able to perform
as wonderfully as space scientists had hoped it would.
dr. allen was the recipient of numerous awards, decorations,
and medals. He wore the command Pilot Badge (more than 4,000
flying hours) and the Master Missile Badge. He was awarded
the air force legion of Merit in 1957, 1968, and 1971; the U.s.
department of defense (dod) Joint service commendation
Medal in 1965; the U.s. air force distinguished service Medal
in 1973 and 1982; and the dod distinguished service Medal in
1977, 1979, and 1982. He was awarded the National intelligence
distinguished service Medal for service on the President’s
foreign intelligence advisory Board, 1993–1995. in 1990,
dr. allen was honored with the george W. goddard award
from the society of Photo-optical instrumentation engineers/
international society for optical engineering; the rotary
National space Trophy; the robert H. goddard Memorial
Trophy from the National space club; and the William oliver
Baker award from the security affairs support association
(now the intelligence and National security association). in
1999 he received the distinguished graduate award from the
West Point association of graduates.
dr. allen was inducted into the air force space and Missile
Pioneers Hall of fame on august 8, 2007, at Peterson air force
Base in colorado. additional honors included the University
of illinois alumni achievement award, the National
geographic society/general Thomas d. White Trophy, the
american institute of aeronautics and astronautics von
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Kármán Lectureship in Astronautics in 1987 and the Goddard
astronautics award in 1995, the american astronautical
society Military astronautics award, the distinguished
graduate award of the air force institute of Technology/
association of graduates of the U.s. air force academy, and
the Nasa distinguished service Medal.
Two awards are named in his honor. The U.s. air force’s
general lew allen, Jr., Trophy is awarded annually to
recognize sustained job performance, job knowledge, direct
sortie involvement, and military qualities. The annual lew
allen award for excellence presented by JPl recognizes
significant accomplishments and leadership in scientific
research or technological innovation.
To his colleagues and friends, lew allen was an unfailing
source of encouragement, support, wisdom, and knowledge.
stories abound of his personal warmth, humility, commanding
presence, expectations of excellence, and creative vision. of the
many remembrances, there is one that may especially capture
his qualities: “He was quiet, considerate, and extremely
intelligent. He listened a lot and asked a lot of questions. He
did not say much, but what he did say was very important.”
dr. allen was laid to rest at arlington National cemetery
on March 22, 2010. He is survived by his wife of 60 years, the
former Barbara frink Hatch; two sons, lew iii and James; three
daughters, Barbara, Marjorie, and christie; 13 grandchildren;
and 11 great-grandchildren.
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