William F. Ballhaus Sr. (1918 – August 16, 2013) was an engineer who worked in the field of aircraft and manufacturing.Obituary (2014) ''AIAA Fellow Ballhaus Died in August 2013'', Aerospace America 52(1), B21. He was educated at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

and California Institute of Technology. He was employed at various posts in aircraft design and manufacture at

Douglas Douglas may refer to: People * Douglas (given name) * Douglas (surname) Animals *Douglas (parrot), macaw that starred as the parrot ''Rosalinda'' in Pippi Longstocking *Douglas the camel, a camel in the Confederate Army in the American Civil W ...

, Convair, and Northrop (chief engineer). In 1965, he was appointed president of Beckman Instruments, where he gradually converted the manufacturing focus from defense to medical instruments. Ballhaus had a keen interest in economics, particularly in the relationship between tax policy and growth, and played a role in the lowering of capital gains taxes by Congress in 1978.EF Denison (1979) "Accounting for Slower Economic Growth", Brookings Institution Press. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1973 and, with the election of his son, William F. Ballhaus Jr., to the same institution, they became the first father-son members of NAE.

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National Academy of Engineering
member page
William F. Ballhaus Prize
at California Institute of Technology 2013 deaths 20th-century American engineers Stanford University School of Engineering alumni California Institute of Technology alumni 1918 births {{US-engineer-stub