Stanley F. Schmidt

Who is Stanley F. Schmidt?

Stanley F. Schmidt was born in Hollister, California, on January 21, 1926. He received the B.E.E. degree from Marquette University in 1946, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University in 1952 and 1959, respectively.

From 1946 to 1961, he was with NASA Ames Research Center, where he discovered the utility of the Kalman filter as applied to data processing for the nonlinear navigation equations of the manned lunar mission. Also while at Ames, Dr. Schmidt developed piloted motion simulators, designed nonlinear compensation techniques for saturation effects in control systems, and served as Branch Chief in charge of all analog simulation work. During 1961 and 1962, Dr. Schmidt was with Lockheed Missiles & Space Company. There he applied filter theory and model identification techniques and developed digital computer programs for processing tracking data and giving postflight evaluation of launch vehicle guidance and propulsion systems.

From 1962 to 1966, Dr. Schmidt was a senior Staff Scientist with Philco's Western Development Laboratory. There he directed studies of navigation and guidance systems for space vehicle systems and development of digital computer programs for analysis and design of space vehicle systems. Also at Philco, he conceived the fan beam navigation satellite technique and pursued studies to prove the feasibility and accuracy of this concept. He also developed a formulation of the Kalman filter which was named the Schmidt–Kalman filter in his honor.