Portal:Systems science/Systems scientist/4

Eberhardt Rechtin (1926–2006) was an American systems engineer and respected authority in aerospace systems and systems architecture. He received both his BS (1946) and PhD (1950) degrees from Caltech. He worked at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory from 1948-1967, holding, among other positions, that of chief architect and director of the NASA Deep Space Network.

He became the Director of DARPA in 1967, and stayed in the Defense Department as Assistant Secretary for Telecommunications. He was president and CEO of The Aerospace Corporation from 1977–1987. In 1987, he left Aerospace to found the systems architecture graduate program at the University of Southern California, from which he retired.