Brad Parkinson Named Stanford Engineering Hero

Stanford Aero/Astro Emeritus Prof. Brad Parkinson has been selected as one of the Stanford Engineering Heroes, an honor recognizing those who have advanced the course of human, social, and economic progress through engineering. The program celebrates the achievements of the most accomplished former faculty and alumni of the School whose work has had a profound effect on our everyday lives.

Prof. Parkinson was the chief architect of the now-ubiquitous Global Positioning System (GPS), which he led as a U.S. Air Force colonel in 1973. As a professor at Stanford, he pioneered GPS for aviation and other applications, including the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) used by the FAA. More recently, he led the NASA/Stanford Gravity Probe B program that validated Einstein's General Theory of Relativity to an unprecedented accuracy. Parkinson is co-editor and an author of the best-selling textbook, Global Positioning System: Theory and Applications. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford in 1966.

Among the previous recipients of this honor was William F. Durand, a pioneer in the fields of aeronautics, naval propulsion, and engineering research methods. The Aero/Astro building is named in his honor.