Theodore von Kármán

Theodore von Kármán, director of Caltech's aeronautical laboratory, backed a group of students including Frank Malina and Jack Parsons who began testing rocket motors in an Arroyo Seco gully in 1936. With army funding the effort became the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1944, which later built America's first satellite and its planetary probes. He also founded what became the von Karman Institute in Belgium and NATO's aeronautical research advisory group.