Robert M. L. Baker Jr., earned a bachelor's degree in Physics at UCLA with highest honors (summa cum laude ? first in his class) was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, earned a master's degree in Physics and a Ph.D. in Engineering at UCLA-- the Ph.D. degree with a specialization in space navigation was, according to UCLA officials, the first of its kind to be granted in the United States.
Dr. Baker was on the faculty of the Department of Astronomy at UCLA from 1959 to 1963 and the Department of Engineering and Applied Science at UCLA from 1963 to 1971 as a Lecturer and Assistant Professor. During that time he was a Lecturer at the United States Air Force Academy.
While on a two-year tour of active duty in the Air Force he worked on a variety of classified aerospace projects. In 1961 he became the Director of the Lockheed's Astrodynamics Research Center in Bel Air, California and in 1964 joined Computer Sciences Corporation as the Associate Manager for Mathematical Analysis.
In 1980 he was elected President of West Coast University, an accredited university for the adult learner (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology or ABET and Western Association of Schools and Colleges or WASC) now operating under the auspices of American Career College in Los Angeles.
Dr. Baker has been Project Manager on three prototype development, fabrication, and test projects under contract to the U. S. Navy and Principal Investigator on several NASA and USAF projects while Director of Lockheed's Astrodynamic Research Center. As President of West Coast University Dr. Baker coordinated the activities of six groups of scientists and engineers spread throughout Southern California. Dr. Baker has been interested in the dynamics of gravitational fields since the 1950's and gravitational-wave research since the early 1960's. He holds six patents and 15 pending patents in the United States, Europe, Russia, and China in the area of gravitational-wave generation and detection in the laboratory.
After retiring from West Coast University in 1997 as President and Professor of Engineering, Dr. Baker became the Senior Consultant for Transportation Sciences Corporation and GRAVWAVE? LLC.
Dr. Baker won the UCLA Physics Prize, was recipient of the Dirk Brouwer Award for outstanding contributions in astrodynamics and orbital mechanics, and was a recipient of the Outstanding Man of the Year Junior Chamber of Commerce award in 1965 presented to him by Ronald Reagan. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was national chairman of the Astrodynamics Technical Committee of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) from 1961 to 1964, was Editor of the Journal of the Astronautical Sciences from 1963 to 1975, was appointed by William Bennett to the National Advisory Committee on Accreditation and Institutional Eligibility of the Department of Education from 1987 to 1989, was appointed to the Academic Review Committee on Gravitational Research with the U. S. Army (Redstone Arsenal) from 2001 to 2003, Vice Chairperson of the first International HFGW Conference and Workshop at the MITRE Corporation in 2003, Honorary Chairman of the second International High-Frequency Gravitational Wave Workshop at Austin Texas in September 2007, Chairman of the third Workshop in Huntsville, Alabama in 2009, appointed Chairman of the HFGW Symposium at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in 2010 and Advisory Professor Chongqing University, China 2004 and 2008.
Dr Baker is the inventor of the Li-Baker High-Frequency Gravitational Wave (HFGW) Detector.
Dr Baker was the author of several textbooks and over one hundred company reports, symposium papers, and journal articles in the area of astrodynamics, celestial mechanics, and High-Frequency Gravitational Waves (HFGWs) including An Introduction to Astrodynamics (1960) with Maud W. Makemson and Astrodynamics: Applications and Advanced Topics (1969).
