Howard P. Robertson was born in Hoquiam, WA in 1903. He was educated in Mathematics at the University of Washington and received his PhD in Mathematics and Physics from Cal Tech in 1925. He did post-doctoral work in Germany and at Princeton in the 1920s. He was faculty at Princeton and Cal Tech. His governmental work spanned from 1940 until his death in 1961.Robertson volunteered himself into the military-science community at the beginning of the 1940s with his concern about protection vs aerial assault bombing. This evolved into work on terminal velocity effects in bombs and missiles, and on to concerns with nuclear bombs, not always on the defensive side. His duties were occasionally so intense that he had to be on-leave from Cal Tech (1942-1945; 1950-1952; 1954-1956). He was commonly available in the interims as well. Robertson was on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Air Force from 1948-1950, having just previously, 1946-1947, been Scientific Advisor to the Director of the CIA. He was consultant to the CIA in 1952-1954. He was appointed chief scientific advisor to the Allied Command in Europe, SACEUR, SHAPE from 1954-1956. He had many other specific involvements with the military/intel community, among which was the UFO-relevant CIA-organized 'Robertson Panel' meeting in January of 1953. Robertson died in 1961 from injuries sustained in an automobile accident while driving home after a party at which he had been drinking. In one of the strange twists which the universe throws up, one of his drinking partners at that party was Donald Menzel. (Mike Swords) Captain Ed Ruppelt commented upon Robertson in the following way: "He first came out to ATIC in November 1952 with a group of other scientists to review our UFO material. He and his party stayed two days and then went back to Washington and suggested to the National Security Council that a group of top scientists get together to look over the reports." Some UFOlogists have differing opinions about the details of some of this, but this is what Captain Ruppelt believed at the time. (Fran Ridge)