About 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. In 2019, Bradford Parkinson shared the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering with three other GPS pioneers (James Spilker, Hugo FrueHauf, and Richard Schwartz). While studying there, Parkinson discovered he had a deep interest in controls engineering, which was introduced in a Senior Level course at the time. 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.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.