Dean E. Wooldridge
1913 — 2006

Dean Everett Wooldridge, a leading scientist and technological industrialist, died on Wednesday, September 20, in Santa Barbara, California, after a brief illness. He was 93.

Born in Chickasha, Oklahoma, on May 30, 1913, Wooldridge graduated high school at age 14, and received his bachelor’s and then master’s degrees from the University of Oklahoma before the age of 20. In 1936, at age 23, he received a doctoral degree in physics (with the rare designation of “summa cum laude”) from Caltech. He then joined the staff of Bell Laboratories and achieved a worldwide reputation as a leading expert in the theory of magnetism basic to modern electronics. When World War II began, Wooldridge became the head of a group developing the first airborne computers to guide missiles.

In 1946, he left Bell and joined classmate Simon Ramo (PhD ’36) to build a unique electronics and missile corporation now known as Hughes Electronics. In five years that company concentrated the largest number of engineers and scientists in the U.S. devoted exclusively to military technology. It was the premier company producing airborne radar, computers, and guided missiles to counter a possible bomber attack on the U.S., with the Hughes apparatus equipping every American interceptor airplane.

In 1953, Wooldridge and Ramo founded the Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation with the backing of Thompson Products, Inc., which manufactured parts for Hughes’s Falcon missile. Mathematician John Von Neumann picked Wooldridge and Ramo to join a government-initiated committee that formed the nation’s Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) program. Wooldridge and Ramo were then awarded the prime contract for overall systems engineering and technical direction of the ICBM, to which President Eisenhower assigned the highest national priority and which became the largest single weapon systems program in U.S. history. In 1958, the Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation was the first corporation to build and launch a spacecraft, Pioneer 1. One of its later spacecraft, Pioneer 10, was the first to leave the solar system, transmitting back outer-space data for well over 30 years.

Ramo-Wooldridge merged with Thompson Products in 1958 to form TRW, Inc. With Dean Wooldridge as its president, TRW became one of the world’s largest high-technology companies. After he retired in 1962, Wooldridge traveled with his wife for 10 years and then took up the study of neurology. From these studies he authored two highly respected books, The Machinery of the Brain and The Machinery of Life, which were widely recommended in postgraduate courses in leading universities.

Wooldridge served as a trustee of Caltech and a consultant to the President’s Science Advisor. He received a number of honors, including membership in the National Academy of Sciences.

Wooldridge married Helene Detweiler in 1936. She passed away in 2001. He leaves three children, Dean E. Wooldridge Jr. of Las Vegas, Nevada, Anna Lou Eklof of Bailey, Colorado, and James A. Wooldridge of Basking Ridge, New Jersey, and three grandchildren, Michael Andrew, Jonathan David, and Lisa Michelle Wooldridge.