Jerry Grey (1926–2020)

[excerpt from obituary]
He was a professor of aerospace engineering at Princeton University for 55 years, where his research in rocket combustion instability was instrumental in assuring the reliability of the Redstone rocket that launched Alan Shepard, America's first astronaut, and of the Saturn launcher's giant F-1 rocket that placed the Apollo astronauts on the Moon. As Director of Princeton's Nuclear Propulsion Research Laboratory he was a pioneer in the field of space nuclear propulsion and power. At Princeton, he created and taught the first university course on space nuclear powerplants. With the eminent scientist Arthur R. Kantrowitz, he was co-inventor of the Kantrowitz-Grey molecular beam source, which is the standard tool for research in this field. He holds a dozen patents in high-temperature instrumentation, a field in which he was preeminent for years. He published over 400 technical and popular books and peer-reviewed papers covering broad areas of aerospace and energy science and technology, and consulted actively for a number of aerospace organizations and government agencies.