Lloyd Berkner
Lloyd Berkner was President of Associated Universities, Inc. at the time of NRAO’s funding and founding. He had a wildly successful career in telecommunications with the Bureau of Standards and, later, the Carnegie Institute, with such notable achievements as aiding Byrd’s first voyage to the Antarctic. He was the special assistant to the Secretary of State in 1946. In 1951, he became the first full-time President of AUI. At AUI, he rallied NSF for a national radio astronomy observatory and won. He was acting Director of the new NRAO from its 1956 founding until 1959. He also founded the International Geophysical Year to spur international development of satellite technologies which resulted in the 1957 launch of Sputnik I and the 1958 launch of Explorer I.
