I really should read a good history of the space race. From Space Race Titan William Pickering Dead at 93:
William H. Pickering, a central figure in the early U.S. space race who as director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory played a key role in launching America’s first satellite into orbit, has died at age 93, NASA said on Tuesday.
[...]
A native of New Zealand who immigrated to the United States in 1929 as a student, Pickering obtained bachelor and master’s degrees in electrical engineering, then a PhD. in physics from Caltech before becoming an engineering professor there in 1946. He became a U.S. citizen in 1941.“William Pickering was one of New Zealand’s most distinguished sons. His passing is a tremendous loss,” New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said in a statement.
Pickering began working on guided missile research for JPL in 1944, when the laboratory was administered by the U.S. Army, and was project manager for Corporal, the first operational missile system developed there. The Sergeant solid-fuel missile was later developed under his direction.
Pickering was named JPL director in 1954 and three years later faced perhaps his greatest challenge as the Soviet Union stunned the world by successfully launching Sputnik into orbit on Oct. 4, 1957, ushering in the dawn of the space age and the U.S.-Soviet space race.
The following month, JPL and the Army Ballistic Missile Agency were assigned to put the first U.S. satellite into orbit. Pickering directed the JPL effort, which in just 83 days provided the satellite, telecommunications and upper rocket stages that successfully lofted Explorer 1 on Jan. 31, 1958. That triumph followed the embarrassing failure the previous month of the first U.S. attempt to launch a satellite, Vanguard 1, a separate project managed by the Naval Research Laboratory.
Instruments carried by Explorer 1, and its successor, Explorer 3, provided evidence that the Earth is surrounded by intense bands of radiation, named the Van Allen belts, one of the first major scientific discoveries of the space age. It was considered Pickering’s greatest achievement and set the stage for future space exploration.