(Died: May 1, 1974)
Interests: Inertial Propulsion, Dean Drive Age: 54
Dr. William O. Davis is Director of Research of the Huyck Corporation of New York City. He was born in Buffalo, New York on November 11, 1919. He received his A.B. degree from New York University in 1939, with study at Cambridge University, England, on a Carnegie Scholarship from 1937 to 1938. He received his Ph.D. in physics from New York University in 1950.
In 1940 Dr. Davis joined what was then the Army Air Corps as a flying Cadet. At the close of World War II he was commanding the 824th Bombardment Squadron (B-24s) of the Fifteenth Air Force.
After completion of his graduate training in 1950 he became a member of the staff of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory as an Air Force Officer, where he worked on nuclear weapons development. From 1953 to 1957 he was Chief of Scientific Research, Headquarters, Air Research and Development Command and from 1955 to 1957 Deputy Commander of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. It while in this post that Col. Davis initiated the Project Farside program discussed in the article "Pie in the Sky" in the August, 1961 ANALOG, the first U.S. Spaceprobe program to get instruments out into the van Allen radiation belt. And the one U.S. Space program to get there ahead of the Russians.
His last assignment in the Air Force, from 1957 to 1958, as Assistant to the Director of Laboratories, Wright Air Development Center. He resigned as Colonel from the Air Force in 1958.
In 1958-59 he was Vice President for Research, Executive Vice President and President, in succession, of the Turbo Dynamics Corporation. His research activities have covered the fields of cosmic ray neutrons, special weapons development, and the management of government and industrial research programs.
