Rudolph A. Winnacker (25 August 1904 – June 1985) was the first chief historian of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, serving from 1949 to 1973. Winnacker completed a PhD at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

in 1933. He taught for 10 years at the Universities of Nebraska and Michigan, and at the National War College. During World War II, he carried out research for the Office of Strategic Services at its Research and Analysis Branch in Washington, D.C., and overseas.James E. O'Neill and Robert W. Krauskopf (1976),
World War II: An Account of Its Documents, Part 3
', Howard University Press, 1976, p239 In 1953, he worked on the report of the Rockefeller Committee on Department of Defense Organization. This work culminated in the Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1958. This legislation established the Advanced Research Projects Agency, eventually known as

DARPA The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Ad ...

.https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-72/pdf/STATUTE-72-Pg514.pdf

References

Historians of the United States Cold War historians 1904 births 1985 deaths University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni Harvard University alumni People of the Office of Strategic Services University of Nebraska faculty University of Michigan faculty 20th-century American historians American male non-fiction writers 20th-century American male writers {{US-historian-stub