Al Hibbs
1924-2003

Albert R. Hibbs, BS ’45, PhD ’55, known worldwide as “the voice of JPL,” died on February 24 at age 78 of complications following heart surgery. Born October 19, 1924 in Akron, Ohio, Hibbs decided as a five-year-old that he wanted to go to the moon. He did qualify as an astronaut, in 1967, even though he was seven years over the age limit. He was slated to fulfill his dream on Apollo 25, but the program ended at 17. At Caltech, he studied physics under the Navy’s V-12 program. “I wanted
to conquer space, and my roommate, Roy Walford, decided that he would con-quer death. Together we would then conquer time,” he later wrote. (Walford, now professor emeritus of pathology at UCLA’s medical school, is an internationally known gerontologist.) In the late 1940s, he and Walford took time off from graduate school at the University of Chicago to “break the bank” in Reno and Las Vegas by exploiting the mechanical quirks of certain roulette wheels, earning them a
story in Life magazine; their winnings financed a 40-foot sailboat and a year and a half roaming the Caribbean.

Hibbs joined the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, then run by Caltech for the Army, in February 1950. (The Lab was developing guided-missile technology but the word “rocket” smacked too much of Buck Rogers, so Caltech had coined the euphemism to avoid scaring off potential donors.) As head of the Research and Analysis Section, he was the systems designer for America’s first successful satellite, Explorer 1.

When JPL became part of the patrimony of the newborn NASA later that year, he helped draw up JPL’s master plan to explore the solar system with unmanned spacecraft. His gift for explaining difficult science in lay terms led to him becoming the radio and television chronicler of the Ranger and Surveyor missions to the moon in the 1960s; the Mariners to Venus, Mars, and Mercury in the ’60s and ’70s; the Vikings to Mars in the ’70s; and the Voyagers to the outer solar system in the ’70s and ’80s. He also hosted or narrated various programs for NBC and PBS, winning a Peabody in 1963 for the four-year NBC children’s series, Exploring.

After helping to set up JPL’s Space Science Division from 1960 to 1962 and serving as its first chief, Hibbs went on loan as a staff scientist for the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, studying how arms-control treaties could be monitored from space. Five years later, he returned to JPL, where he spent the rest of his career working in a variety of technology programs, earning NASA’s Exceptional Service Award and the NASA Achievement Award in the process. He retired in 1986, three years before Voyager 2 reached Neptune.

Hibbs maintained close ties with Caltech, where over the years he taught courses in government, national secu-rity, transportation issues, and physics. He took time off from JPL to earn his PhD, supported by his wife, the late Florence Pavin. His advisor was Richard Feyn-man, another noted raconteur, lockpicker, and thespian, and the two became close friends. They cowrote Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals, a standard text on the subject, and Hibbs wrote the foreword for Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman.

Hibbs’s own unpublished reminiscences, taped by Nicolas Booth, are the source for the account of Explorer 1’s launch that follows.

Hibbs is survived by his second wife, Marka; children Victoria and Bart (BS ’77); stepchildren Larry Wilson and Alicia Cortrite; sister Agnes Jones; and three grandchildren. Donations may be made to the Caltech Y, Mail Code 158-86, Pasadena, CA 91125. —DS