About James McCormack
James McCormack Jr. (8 November 1910 – 3 January 1975) was a United States Army officer who served in World War II, and was later the first Director of Military Applications of the United States Atomic Energy Commission. A 1932 graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, McCormack also studied at Hertford College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, earning a Master of Arts degree in Romance languages, and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he earned a Master of Science degree in civil engineering. In 1942, he was assigned to the War Department General Staff. On 1 July 1944, he became the Chief of the Movements Branch of Twelfth United States Army Group, remaining in this role until 28 May 1945. He then returned to the War Department General Staff, where he served in the Operations and Plans Division. In 1947, McCormack was chosen as the Director of Military Applications of the United States Atomic Energy Commission with the rank of brigadier general. He took a pragmatic approach to handling the issue of the proper agency to hold custody of the nuclear weapons stockpile, and encouraged and supported Edward Teller's development of thermonuclear weapons. He transferred to the United States Air Force on 25 July 1950, and was appointed Director of Nuclear Applications at the Air Research and Development Center in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1952. He was subsequently promoted to major general, and became Deputy Commander of the Air Research and Development Command. After retiring from the Air Force in 1955, McCormack became the first head of the Institute for Defense Analysis, a non-profit research organization created to provide advice and support to the Department of Defense's scientific and technological research efforts formed by ten universities. In 1958 he became vice president for industrial and governmental relations at MIT, in which capacity he originated the proposal that the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics be used as the basis for a new space agency, which eventually became the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. He was Chairman of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, and from 1965 to 1970 was chairman of the Communications Satellite Corporation. He was promoted to first lieutenant in August 1935, and awarded his Bachelor of Arts degree in Romance languages from Oxford (this was later converted to a Master of Arts degree).
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