James Rhyne Killian

Killian was born on July 24, 1904, in Blacksburg, South Carolina. His father was a textile maker. He attended The McCallie School in Chattanooga, Tennessee later studied at Duke University (formerly Trinity University) for two years until he transferred to MIT, where he received a Bachelor of Business Administration and engineering administration in 1926. While there, he was a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity.

Leadership at MIT

In 1932, while the editor of MIT's alumni magazine Technology Review, Killian was instrumental in the founding of Technology Press, the publishing imprint that would later become the institute's independent publishing house, MIT Press. He became executive assistant to MIT President Karl Taylor Compton in 1939, and co-directed the wartime operation of MIT, which strongly supported military research and development.

From 1948 until 1959, Killian was the 10th president of MIT. His administration encouraged the western expansion of campus, building Baker House, the Kresge Oval, and the Kresge Chapel, all significant modernist buildings. MIT's Sloan School of Management, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, and Lincoln Laboratory were established during his presidency.

Advisor to the President of the U.S.

In 1956, James R. Killian Jr was named as the 1st Chair to the new President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board by the Eisenhower Administration, a position which he held until April 1963.

Shortly after the October 1957 launches of the Soviet artificial satellites, Sputnik 1 and Sputnik 2, President Eisenhower asked Killian to serve as Special Assistant for Science and Technology, making him the first true Presidential Science Advisor. Killian took leave from MIT for two years to fill this new role. He headed the Killian Committee and oversaw the creation of the President's Science Advisory Committee (PSAC). PSAC was instrumental in initiating national curriculum reforms in science and technology and in establishing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Killian described an environment of "widespread discouragement" facing scientists and, in particular, scientists of the Technological Capabilities Panel, which had been convened by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower to develop technological solutions to the perceived possibility of a surprise nuclear attack by the Soviet Union. This stifling work atmosphere was caused by the widely cast, groundless aspersions of Senator Joseph McCarthy and the removal of Robert Oppenheimer from work on sensitive military projects. Oppenheimer had expressed support for shifting U.S. military resources from offensive nuclear weapons to defensive capabilities, and following Oppenheimer's loss of his security clearance, scientists felt that it was inadvisable to challenge the thinking of the military establishment.