Bradford Parkinson

Bradford Parkinson (born February 16, 1935) is an American engineer and inventor, retired United States Air Force Colonel and Emeritus Professor at Stanford University.

He is best known as the lead architect, advocate and developer, with early contributions from Ivan Getting and Roger Easton, of the Air Force NAVSTAR program, better known as Global Positioning System.

He was also the co-principal investigator (co-PI) and program manager on Gravity Probe B, which tested gravitomagnetism and was the first direct mechanical test of Einstein’s General Relativity.

He has received numerous awards and honors for GPS and contributions to engineering and invention, including the Charles Stark Draper Prize, National Inventors Hall of Fame, and IEEE Medal of Honor, among others.

For his secondary education, Parkinson attended the Breck School, then a small, all-boys preparatory school, graduating in 1952.

Parkinson has credited his experiences at the Breck School for inspiring in him an early love of math and science, an interest which eventually became his life's calling.

Parkinson was a distinguished graduate of the United States Naval Academy, graduating in 1957 with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering.

While studying there, Parkinson discovered he had a deep interest in controls engineering, which was introduced in a Senior Level course at the time.

Fortunately, one of Parkinson's Electrical Engineering professors was an Air Force officer who urged him to consider being commissioned in the Air Force rather than the Navy.

Parkinson also knew he wanted to get a Ph.D. later in life, and the Air Force was more receptive to graduate and post-graduate education at this time.

After being commissioned in the Air Force, he was trained in electronics maintenance and supervised large ground radar installations in Washington state.

He then was sponsored by USAF to attend MIT, studying controls engineering, inertial guidance, astronautics and electrical engineering.

Parkinson worked in the lab of Charles Stark Draper, the namesake for the prestigious Draper Prize which Parkinson went on to win later in his life.

At MIT, he received a Master of Science in Aeronautics and Astronautics in 1961 and was elected to the Tau Beta Pi and Sigma Xi honor Societies.

Parkinson was then assigned to work at the Central Inertial Guidance Test Facility at Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo, New Mexico.

There he developed tests and was a Chief Analyst for the evaluation of the Air Force’s inertial guidance systems and continued work on electrical and controls engineering.

In 1964, after three years at Holloman, Parkinson was assigned to a Ph.D. program at Stanford University graduating in 1966, with a degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics.

After graduating from the Naval Academy, Parkinson opted to perform regular Air Force duty in order to, as he put it, “find out what the Air Force was all about”.

He served two years as Chief Communications-Electronics officer at an early warning station In Washington State.

After finishing his Ph.D. at Stanford, he was assigned to the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School (1966–68) as an academic instructor and was chief of their Simulation Division.

He also was chief academic instructor to a class of USAF Astronauts, including many who later joined NASA and flew on the Space Shuttle.

He then attended the Air Force Command and Staff College for a year where he became a Distinguished Graduate.

Next, he was assigned as a Professor and Deputy Head of the Air Force Academy Department of Astronautics and Computer Science.

In the midst of his first year he was detached to help with the development of a brand-new version of the AC-130 gunship.

In particular, he led the final development of the innovative digital fire-control system.

After successful testing at Eglin Air Force Base, he deployed to South East Asia during the Vietnam War and flew 26 combat missions to continue evaluation and refinement of the weapons system.

During this deployment he logged more than 170 hours of combat missions, and was awarded a number of military honors including the Bronze Star, Meritorious Service Medal, two Air Medals and a Presidential Unit Citation.

He then returned to the Air Force Academy as the Head of the Department of Astronautics and Computer Science.

He next was a student at the Naval War College, in Newport, Rhode Island, for a year where he graduated with distinction and was followed by a brief assignment as the Chief Engineer of the Advanced Ballistic Re-Entry System (ABRES) project, at Los Angeles Air Force Station.

In 1973, thanks in part to the influence of his mentor, General William W. Dunn, the Commander, Lt-Gen Kenneth Schultz, assigned Parkinson to a floundering Air Force program called Project 621B.

This program had been trying to gain approval for a new satellite-based navigation system concept.

Strong technical support was rendered by The Aerospace Corporation.

Parkinson quickly recruited a small cadre of highly competent Air Force Officer-Engineers, with Masters and PhDs from top universities.

After initially failing to gain approval in August 1973, Parkinson called a remote site meeting in The Pentagon over Labor Day 1973 called the "Lonely Halls Meeting."

At that meeting, attended only by his officer-engineers and two people from the Aerospace Corporation, he led the re-architecture of the concept.

He then assumed lead responsibility to sell the new configuration to the Air Force and to top Pentagon Officials.

By December 1973 he gained approval and budget for a four satellite, live demonstration of the new idea.

This included the concept of flying Atomic clocks in high orbits that had been advocated by both the Naval Research Laboratory and an earlier USAF Aerospace study by J. B. Woodford and H. Nakamura.

Parkinson then assumed full, direct control of the development of the demonstration system, which included satellites, a global ground control system, nine types of user receivers, and an extensive land, sea and air test program.

In 2019, Bradford Parkinson shared the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering with three other GPS pioneers (James Spilker, Hugo Freuhauf, and Richard Schwartz).