Directs Navy Research Program

James H. Wakelin Jr. '32, of Lawrenceville, N. J., has recently been appointed by President Eisenhower to be Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research and Development. A native of Holyoke, Mass., he attended the public schools in Holyoke and, following graduation from Dartmouth, studied at Cambridge University in England where he was awarded the B.A. degree in the natural sciences in 1934 and an M.A. degree in 1939. In 1940 he received his Ph.D. from Yale where he had specialized in the field of ferro-magnetism.

From 1939 to 1943 Dr. Wakelin served as a senior physicist in the physical research department of the B.F. Goodrich Co., and in 1943 he was made the ordnance staff officer to the Navy Department's Coordinator of Research and Development. During 1945-46, as a lieutenant commander USNR, he served as head of the Chemistry, Mathematics and Mechanics and Materials Sections of the Planning Division, Office of Research and Inventions, and was active in the planning and organization of the Navy's program to sponsor basic scientific research.

Following the war, Dr. Wakelin joined a group of former naval research associates in establishing the Engineering Research Associates Inc. and held the position of director of research, acting at the same time as an associate with several scientific institutes and projects. In 1954 he organized his own scientific consulting business in Princeton, N. J., and served many of the country's largest industrial firms as a consultant on research planning and organization. He is a member of Sigma Xi, the American Physical Society, American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for Computing Machinery, the American Crystallographic Society, Textile Research Institute, and the Textile Institute of Great Britain.

Dr. Wakelin is a frequent contributor to various scientific journals, and he is the co-author of High-Speed Computing Devices, published by McGraw-Hill in 1950.

James H. Wakelin Jr. '32