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Memorial Tributes Volume 20 (2016) / Chapter Skim
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CHARLES V. JAKOWATZ JR.
Pages 114-121

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From page 115...
... , include many pioneering creations that won major awards for their ingenuity. As well, some of the inventions have been judged to be of overwhelming importance to the national security of the US (and the world)
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From page 116...
... He and his team perfected the use of SAR devices, which already enjoyed the unique advantage of providing very high-­ resolution imagery for surveillance through fog and clouds as well as at night. In addition, as is often the case, some of the very best achievements of Jack's team resulted in very diverse arrays of new and unforeseen capabilities, whose existence and ultimate performance have enabled new and important as well as some highly secretive applications.
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From page 117...
... Lawrence Award -- one of the Department of Energy's top prizes -- for achievements that advance the use of SAR to detect exceptionally small changes in landscape. The award read: "For fundamental work in signal analysis and image processing and its applications to national security, specifically, through overhead detection and identification of weapons of mass destruction." Since 1990 Jack had served as the manager of the Sandia Radar Signal Processing Group.
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From page 118...
... Jack chose Purdue University for his own college training, earning a BS in 1972, an MS in 1974, and a PhD in 1976, all in electrical engineering. His doctoral research work -- still cited today -- addressed issues of improving images obtained by computerized axial tomography (CAT)
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From page 119...
... Earlier this year there was a very popular movie, "American Sniper," in which the lead character tells a military psychologist, regarding his accomplishments, that he would like to be remembered only for "the large number of people whose lives were saved because of my actions." That is a legacy that Jack Jakowatz certainly deserves, as the number of American servicemen and women, as well as Allied forces, whose lives have been saved is very large because Jack's technologies were deployed. His and his team's efforts have been key to the detection and elimination of a large variety of battlefield threats that previously had produced very high numbers of deaths and casualties.
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From page 120...
... If you can find a job where you are driving to work and you want to be there that day because it's going to be interesting -- you can learn something, you can teach something, you can do a meaningful piece of work for the country -- man, you've got it made! You won't have to work a day in your life because your job won't be work.
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