The entire astronomy family (experts, amateurs included) held their breaths tightly on December 25th, 2021, as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) made its way into its predestined position in the Lagrange 2 in space.
The successor to the legendary Hubble Space Telescope, JWST is in the news on all the astronomy forums and rightly so. While a lot has been said and written on its features and what it is supposed to do (including taking a look at the earliest moments of the formation of universe), I have felt that somehow not enough has been written on the person on whom it has been named - James E Webb and a lot is not known about him. In this post, I would make a humble effort of making everyone know about him. Request everyone to read on.
James Edwin Webb was an American government official, who had begun his career in public service in Washington D.C., by serving as the secretary to US Representative of North Carolina in 1932. In between his more promising positions of working as the Director of the Bureau of the Budget (1946-1949) and the Under Secretary of the State Department (1949-1952), he had also worked as the assistant to a private attorney and the Personnel Director of the Sperry Gyroscope (a private company).
He had also been posted in the Marines, when he was enlisted as a captain and later a major and was put in charge of a radar program meant for the invasion of the Japanese mainland, during the World War II, which could never see the light of the day, due to the Japanese surrender.
It was during his stint in the State Department, that he had established a profound relationship with the Congress and the ruling elite, mainly due to which he was offered the role of the Administrator of NASA (only the 2nd Administrator of NASA) by President John F. Kennedy himself.
Webb is often credited for pushing the stakes for meeting the goal set by Kennedy for landing an American on the Moon, before the 1960s through the Apollo program and rightly so. It was mainly due to the power he used to wield within the Congress and having got the backing and support of the then President Lyndon B. Johnson, that he could lobby for NASA in Congress and all the support and resources for Apollo were made readily available. The way NASA is known through out the world nowadays is mainly due to the contributions of James Webb, as he had laid the foundations of integrating a host of research centers into a fully functioning co-ordinated organization.
The Apollo program had its share of unfortunate incidents and accidents. After the Apollo 1 accident, Webb was very careful to ensure that the progress of the Apollo program was left unhindered and to this effect, he sacrificed much by owning much blame upon himself in most of the congressional committee meetings, in order to leave NASA and the Johnson administration out of it. Thus, the Apollo program owes a lot to the man, for it was much due to his selfless act, that they could achieve the Apollo 11 landing.
Not only the Apollo mission, Webb ensured that in spite of the pressure for meeting the timelines for the moon-landing deadline, NASA could carry out the Mariner and Pioneer space programs.
A staunch democrat, who was very close to the President Johnson, James Webb left his post of the NASA Administrator, after the President decided to not run for re-election, to allow the Republican President Richard Nixon choose his successor, under whom the Apollo dream was finally realized. He was honoured with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Johnson in 1968 and the Langley Gold Medal from the Smithsonian Institution in 1976 for his exemplary contributions.
Thanks to you for your patience in going through my post in entirety. That was my tribute to the man, after whom the machine we are looking forward to watch our past in the very near future, has been named. The James Webb Space Telescope. Thanks a lot!
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