Man for the Job

With better luck than anyone had a right to expect, President Eisenhower last week found just the man to take on the job--vacant since the "wanted" sign was hung out last August--of running the Pentagon's increasingly diverse research, and engineering problems. The man: Dr. Herbert York, 37, one of the nation's top scientists, who has been holding down the job of chief scientist of the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency, ten-month-old overall Pentagon planning group.

Known in the scientific world as a rollicking wit and a hard worker, stocky (5 ft. 11 in., 190 Ibs.) Physicist Herb York got his start in science as a small boy in Rochester, N.Y., when his uncle gave him a book on astronomy. He worked his way through the University of Rochester (A.B. '41, Phi Beta Kappa), took his Master's in 1943. After that he joined the parade of topnotch atomic physicists at the University of California's famed Radiation Laboratory, later became associate director. In March he moved his wife and three children to Washington and took on his ARPA job, turned out to be that rare combination of thoroughgoing professional and easygoing, low-pressure executive. Once a sports-jacket type, York has changed to conventional suits, but his wife still has to sew identifying labels into his clothing, for he is color blind.

In his new $22,000-a-year job, Herb York will need all the wit and vision he can muster. By title, he will be Defense Secretary Neil McElroy's Director of Research and Engineering, will have supervisory control over the $2.5 billion Defense Department scientific projects--but no scientific budget of his own. Enmeshed in the program are all the stubborn duplications, fears and rivalries of different services whose planners and dreamers demand a separate piece of the wild-blue-yonder projects. The Air Force, for example, got miffed at ARPA when ARPA's Johnny-come-lately Boss Roy Johnson took much of the credit for the successful launching of the orbiting Atlas (TIME, Dec. 29), which, after all, was an Air Force ICBM.

Another rapidly growing problem: the in-fighting between the Pentagon's ARPA and the civilian-controlled National Aeronautics and Space Administration. ARPA's Johnson recently stomped on NASA's big toe by publicly proclaiming the broad details of NASA's upcoming man-in-space Project Mercury. If anyone can survive the built-in hazards of the job, walk a straight line through the service detours and still know a scientific toe when he sees one, it is Herb York.

NASA's Project Mercury, to be detailed officially in mid-January, aims to shoot a man into orbit within two to three years, and return him safely to earth. Although much of the hardware for the shoot has been developed and proved, scientists are still working on the development of new metallurgy and better tracking and recovery systems. Pushing the capsule-enclosed man into space will be the job of the Air Force's Atlas (another 20 or 30 Atlas shoots must be made before the missile can be considered thoroughly reliable). Who will be the first orbiting man? NASA will carefully choose a team of volunteers, all of whom will get similar training. As the big day approaches, the first man will be selected from this group; the others will make subsequent flights.

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