Galveston College will welcome retired NASA physicist F. Don Cooper as the featured speaker for its 2024-2025 “Building a Better World” Lecture Series at 6 p.m. on April 30 in the Seibel Wing on the college’s main campus, located at 4015 Avenue Q in Galveston.
Admission to the lecture series is free and open to the public.
Cooper’s presentation ‘Memories of Apollo’ will discuss his experience during the Space Race in the 1960s and his involvement with the manned Apollo missions.
Cooper began his aerospace career in 1960 with the Army Ballistic Missile Agency in Huntsville, Alabama, where he was a member of the Advanced Design Laboratory. There, he played a key role in developing a new missile that was later deployed to NATO. Outside the lab, Cooper was also a member of Huntsville’s state champion tennis team.
In 1961, he joined NASA as a mathematician at the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center. Working in the Guidance Theory Section, Cooper helped develop the trans-lunar targeting equations that made the manned Apollo missions to the Moon possible. His technical publications remain preserved in NASA’s historical archives.
Four years late, in 1965, he moved to Houston and continued to work on Apollo for the Johnson Space Center. In 1972, he joined TRW Controls as the Software Project Manager for a group of electric companies, including Pennsylvania Electric. TRW installed software and hardware to control generators and monitor the network.
In 1978, Cooper left his position at TRW to launch F D Systems, a company focused on implementing inventory control software for wholesale businesses. After running the business for 15 years, he sold the company and took on a new challenge as Chief Information Officer at Professional Compounding Centers of America.
Since retiring in 2002, Cooper has dedicated his time to education outreach, volunteering at schools to share the story of how the United States reached the Moon. Through these talks, he demonstrates how practical applications of calculus were used to create the Saturn V Apollo missions guidance equations, aiming to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers.
Cooper holds a degree in physics with a minor in mathematics from Oklahoma Baptist University and pursued graduate studies at the University of Alabama.
He has received commendations from the Army, NASA, TRW, PCCA and the Profile in Excellence and Alumni Achievement Award from Oklahoma Baptist University.
Cooper also was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his work on Apollo 13.
For more information about the GC Lecture Series, please contact GC Professor Laimutis Bytautas, Ph.D., by email at [email protected].
ABOUT GALVESTON COLLEGE
Galveston College was founded in 1967 and is a comprehensive community college providing the residents of Galveston Island and the surrounding region with academic, workforce development, continuing education and community service programs.