Ralph Lawrence Grayson (1921–1991) was a scientist, engineer, pilot, attorney, soldier, father and husband. He went on to be a pioneer in

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at both the

Federal Aviation Administration The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the largest transportation agency of the U.S. government and regulates all aspects of civil aviation in the country as well as over surrounding international waters. Its powers include air traffic m ...

(FAA) and

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

Early life

Grayson was born on April 29, 1921, in

Fort Smith, Arkansas Fort Smith is the third-largest city in Arkansas and one of the two county seats of Sebastian County. As of the 2020 Census, the population was 89,142. It is the principal city of the Fort Smith, Arkansas–Oklahoma Metropolitan Statistical Are ...

. His father, Albert Grayson, an

Arkansas Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the South Central United States. It is bordered by Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, and Texas and Oklahoma to the west. Its name is from the Osage ...

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, and his mother, Pearl Foster Grayson (1895–1934), was a homemaker. Grayson was the eldest and he had seven other siblings. Grayson also had 3 step-siblings.

Career

In 1979 Ralph retired from the FAA, where he served as Associate Commander, Memphis Air Route Traffic Control Center. During this tenure, NASA made several overtures to recruit him. He initially turned these offers down. However, he was later approached with a package deal through Battelle, where he was employed as a subcontractor. He accepted. At NASA, Ralph held the title of Principal Research Scientist, Aviation Safety Reporting System Project Office located at Moffett Field Naval Air Station in

Mountain View, California Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States. Named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains, it has a population of 82,376. Mountain View was integral to the early history and growth of Silicon Valley, and is the ...

. Ralph Grayson was a leading in aviation safety —

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, redundancy systems, and computerized safety systems. His technical papers written during his final years at the FAA and at NASA, became reference material in the field for a generation.

References

External links

NASA Technical Paper #1875, by Ralph L. Grayson and Charles E. Billings, pdf file

The Human Factor in Commercial Aviation, Princeton University Press, pdf file

{{DEFAULTSORT:Grayson, Ralph 1921 births 1991 deaths 20th-century American engineers People from Fort Smith, Arkansas