George Peter

Who was George Peter?

George Peter was an activist for employee rights at Cornell University.

Peter was born in 1922 in Ithaca, New York. His father was an Armenian immigrant, who had a farm near the town and worked in a quarry that was the source of the stone used to construct Myron Taylor Hall. Peter graduated from Ithaca High School in 1940 and then enlisted in the Army Air Corps. In 1947 Peter gave up a job which paid $4,400 annually for a post as an electriconics technician at Cornell that paid only $2,200. In 1960, he moved to Arecibo, Puerto Rico to help build the world's largest radio telescope. He returned to New York State two years later to lead the Research and Development Laboratory of the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, and lived in Aurora, New York. His work involved specialized, low-noise radio astronomy receiver and antenna systems.

In the aftermath of the black student takeover of Willard Straight Hall, Cornell revamped its governance, including adding student and faculty representatives to its Board of Trustees and creating a student-faculty-employee University Senate.