Eberhardt Rechtin

Eberhardt Rechtin, in September 1960, when he was Chief of the Electronics Research Section of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Eberhardt Rechtin (January 16, 1926 – April 14, 2006) was an American systems engineer and respected authority in aerospace systems and systems architecture.

Biography

Rechtin was born in 1926, and received both his BS (1946) and PhD (1950) degrees from Caltech.

He worked at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory from 1948-1967, holding, among other positions, that of chief architect and director of NASA's Deep Space Network. He became the Director of DARPA in 1967, and stayed in the United States Department of Defense as Assistant Secretary for Telecommunications. He was president and CEO of The Aerospace Corporation from 1977-1987. In 1987, he left Aerospace to found the systems architecture graduate program at the University of Southern California, from which he retired.

Rechtin was member of the National Academy of Engineering. the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), the International Academy of Astronautics and the Tau Beta Pi

He received a number of awards from the IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal, the Distinguished Public Service Award (DoD), the Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement (NASA), the Robert H Goddard Award (AIAA), the Distinguished Alumni Award (Caltech), the Pioneer Award (International Council on Systems Engineering) to the C&C Prize (NEC).

Publications

• 1991, Systems Architecting, Creating and Building Complex Systems, Prentice-Hall
• 1997, The Art of Systems Architecting, with Mark W. Maier, CRC Press LLC
• 2000, The Art of Systems Architecting, Second Edition, with Mark W. Maier, CRC Press LLC.

External links

• BEACON Historical Photo of the Month - May 2006 - A tribute to Dr. Rechtin from the JPL site.
• "Eberhardt Rechtin, 80, Space-Signals Leader, Is Dead", NYTimes obituary, April 21, 2006.
• Eberhardt Rechtin Oral History - Eberhardt Rechtin, Electrical Engineer, an oral history conducted in 1995 by Frederik Nebeker, IEEE History Center, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA.

Government offices
Preceded by Charles M. Herzfeld	Director of ARPA 1967 – 1970	Succeeded by Stephen J. Lukasik
Awards
Preceded by Amos E. Joel, Jr. William Keister Raymond W. Ketchledge	IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal 1977	Succeeded by M. Robert Aaron John S. Mayo Eric E. Sumner