Obituaries
Lew Allen Jr.
1925 – 2010
Former director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Lew Allen Jr. passed away on January 4 at the age of 84, in Potomac Falls, Virginia. He led the laboratory from 1982 to 1990, during a period that included the launches of the Galileo mission to Jupiter, Magellan to Venus, and the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, as well as Voyager 2’s Uranus and Neptune flybys.
Allen was born on December 30, 1925, in Miami. He studied at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, and had a distinguished career in the U.S. Army and the Air Force, where he remained until 1982, achieving the rank of four-star general and serving as chief of staff of the Air Force.
In 1954, while still an Air Force officer assigned to the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, Allen completed his doctorate in nuclear physics. He specialized in the potentially damaging effects of high-altitude nuclear explosions on the ground and on spacecraft.
After leaving Los Alamos in 1961, Allen served in various scientific posts within the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force. He became director of the National Security Agency in 1973. He was also a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the Council on Foreign Relations.
A funeral service will be held at Arlington National Cemetery on March 22. A memorial service at JPL is being planned for the near future. — JP
