Profile: George A. Paulikas
 George A. Paulikas helped the Space Physics Laboratory achieve a position of preeminence among scientists studying the effects of space radiation. |
Keeping the Fun in Fundamental Research
by Donna J. Born
Cutting-edge research, solid support, and an enthusiastic attitude made life in the Space Physics Laboratory perfect for George A. Paulikas.
When The Aerospace Corporation was forming in 1960, its founders understood that far-reaching scientific research would be needed for military space systems. The laboratories they established soon became world renowned, and the scientists who worked in them were recognized as among the best. One was George A. Paulikas, who came to the company in 1961 as a young scientist fresh out of graduate school and eventually became executive vice president, the corporation's second highest office.
"The space age was just beginning, and I was very interested in space activities, so I decided to go to work in space physics at Aerospace. It was a new company, new organization, and a new field of research," Paulikas recalled. "It was an incredibly exciting time," he added as he recounted with obvious pleasure, even wonder, his long career at Aerospace. And equally important to him, it was fun: "I've been incredibly lucky. Every job I've had, I've really enjoyed."
His initial work in the Space Physics Laboratory was to develop experiments to fly aboard satellites to measure space radiation. Because he and other scientists in the new laboratory were starting programs from scratch, unusual opportunities came their way. One such opportunity came from the Advanced Research Projects Agency, which had contracted General Dynamics in San Diego to build a series of satellites to look at the space environment. But when the program was canceled, ARPA offered the "slightly used" satellites to the laboratory.
"So," Paulikas said, "I went down to San Diego with two Air Force officers, put the satellites on a truck, brought them back here, persuaded the Air Force to pay for integrating them on rockets and successfully flew one of the satellites. It was amazing. Here I was, you know, 26 or 27 years old, and they handed me and my colleagues millions of dollars worth of spacecraft. It gives you a flavor of how things were in those days."
In the story's sequel, the people who had the original, now obsolete, experiments on those satellites wanted the experiments back. Paulikas laughed and said he felt like General Grant telling General Lee upon his surrender that his men could keep the horses for the spring plowing. He told them, "Sure, you can have the experiments." So the original experiments went back to their owners, but, he continued, "We in the space physics lab, together with scientists from the Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratory, built new experiments appropriate for the orbits in which the spacecraft were going to fly, put these on the satellites, and flew them in the mid-'60s."
Having fun doesn't mean they didn't do an enormous amount of work, Paulikas cautioned. "Let me be clear—we used to work like dogs," he said. "You were always driving up to Vandenberg in the middle of the night, working at the launchpads in the fog and the wind, just freezing. And you're clambering over this rocket. . . and there were your experiments, and you'd do the checkouts. . . . It sort of sent shivers down your spine. It was great, and I think that the thing that was fun was we were doing exciting research."
"It was an unusual time," he recalled, "when you could blend truly exciting frontier research with immediately useful applications." He and others in the lab would regularly answer questions about what radiation dose might damage the film flying on a spacecraft, or what would be the effects on the power systems, the solar arrays, or the thermal paints they were flying. In later years, people would ask about spacecraft charging and its effects. During the exciting time when the Apollo astronauts were going to the moon, Paulikas said, the laboratory would get calls asking what the scientists thought the radiation environment was.
People would also ask about the potential effects of cosmic rays. A solar minimum existed in the mid-1960s, but a much more intense emission of energetic particles from the sun occurred in the early 1970s. "In fact," Paulikas said, "in August 1972, there was a huge blast of energetic particles from the sun, and I remember briefing the generals on the effects on the Defense Support Program, for example on the effects of protons from the sun affecting star sensors, which would see false signals because of all the radiation coming in. . . . Those measurements were some of the earliest of a huge blast of radiation coming from the sun."
 George Paulikas (second from right) with other Aerospace scientists (from left) J. B. Blake, J. R. Stevens, J. Mihalov, and A. L. Vampola in front of the first satellite instrumented by the Space Physics Laboratory. The satellite was launched August 1964 on an Atlas Agena to measure Earth's magnetosphere environment. |
Funding for the Space Physics Laboratory was never a problem because of "the great support we got both from the company and the Air Force," Paulikas said. But he frequently remarked on the unusual times when weighty responsibility was vested in young scientists. "I had to go up on the sixth floor [corporate executive offices] and explain what we were doing," he recalled. "You know, here was this kid explaining what we were going to do with all this money. It was the first generation of Aerospace. And then we persuaded the Air Force into supporting the launches. . . of our space environment radiation experiments. The one problem with doing anything in space is you need to get your experiments into orbit, so we were forever begging all the program offices to put our experiments aboard [their launches]."
Paulikas was appointed director of the laboratory in 1968 (because, he joked, he was having too much fun as a scientist), a position he held for 13 years. Ivan Getting, the first president of Aerospace, praised Paulikas and his staff, noting in his memoirs, All in a Lifetime, that they were internationally recognized for their work in space physics. Paulikas was promoted regularly after that, moving to "bigger and bigger technically challenging sandboxes. As I said earlier, I have been blessed that I have enjoyed every job I've had."
He has received many awards for his work, including the National Reconnaissance Office's Gold Medal, and in 1981, the company's highest honor, the Trustees' Distinguished Achievement Award. The distinction, he explained, "was based on the work that my colleagues and I had done in the l960s and early l970s, namely the study of space radiation, the discovery of some new phenomena of the way radiation in space behaves, the input of these data into radiation belt models, and, of course, the work with a large number of program offices to make that data immediately available so that they could proceed and design both spacecraft and sensors aboard the spacecraft that would take into account the effects of space radiation."
He became executive vice president in 1992. In that position, he said, he derived his greatest satisfaction from ensuring adequate corporate resources to maintain Aerospace's technical capabilities while he steered the company through both good and difficult years. He retired from Aerospace in 1998, but has since "failed retirement" and continues to work as hard as ever on projects for Aerospace and other organizations. He is on the National Academy of Sciences Space Studies Board, "a committee that overviews all NASA's space science programs—more technical challenges, more opportunities to learn."
His curiosity about the physical world and his image of the world as his sandbox have roots in his childhood, which he described in his book, Thirteen Years: 1936–1949. He was born in Lithuania and grew up in Europe, moving continually with his parents, who were preoccupied with the effort to survive during the years of scarcity and hardship during and after World War II. His book, however, describes a happy, almost idyllic Tom Sawyer–like childhood of freedom and adventure as he explored his world unconstrained, wandering through woods, climbing around railroad locomotives, and playing on the river harbor, where he fished, walked on floating logs, and searched abandoned buildings. More questionable adventures involved disassembling live ammunition, the debris of the war, to make fireworks with the gunpowder thus extracted. In the absence of school, his education often came from his engineer father and his teacher mother.
His family eventually immigrated to Chicago, where after high school, he worked at Continental Can company, designing improvements for can-making machinery to pay his way through college. "I still cannot pick up a can of beer without examining the can's seams," he laughed. He began his undergraduate work at the University of Illinois Chicago Navy Pier campus, where he first met Bernard Blake, who also came to Aerospace when Paulikas did and still works in the Space Physics Laboratory. He earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in physics at the U. of I. Urbana campus and a Ph.D. in physics at the University of California, Berkeley. It was a professor at Illinois and another at Berkeley who suggested he work at Aerospace.
How would he like to be regarded by his colleagues? "That I enjoy my work," he quickly answered, but then, with a more serious tone, said, "I would like to think people believe I did the best I could and that I enjoyed all those years. Aerospace was great to me. I had fun, and I was privileged to participate in important projects."
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