A New Zealander, Pickering emigrated to the U.S. in 1929 to study at the California Institute of Technology, where he got degrees in electrical engineering and physics. He was in the right place at the right time: the dawn of the space age.
The U.S., anxious to make a quick response to Russia’s successful launch of Sputnik, turned to Pickering, the director of Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Just 83 days later, the successful 1958 launch of Explorer 1 not only ushered the U.S. into the Space Age, it did useful science: an onboard instrument discovered the Van Allen “radiation belt” around Earth. For his success, when JPL was transferred from the Army to the newly created National Aeronautics and Space Administration, JPL was given the choice of heading either human or robotic space exploration; Pickering chose the latter.
During his watch, JPL conducted an intensive series of space probes to the moon and Earth’s neighboring planets — truly a golden age of space exploration. He was JPL’s director from 1954 to 1976, and was awarded the National Medal of Science by President Gerald Ford, an honorary knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II, and named to the Order of New Zealand. He died March 15 from pneumonia. He was 93.