Hugh Dryden

Hugh Dryden was an American aeronautical scientist and civil servant who served as the first Deputy Administrator of NASA from 1958 until his death in 1965, serving under both of the agency's first two Administrators. A physicist by training who had directed the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, NASA's predecessor agency, before the 1958 transition, Dryden brought deep technical credibility in high-speed aerodynamics research, having led pioneering wind-tunnel and supersonic flight studies dating back to the 1920s, and he played a central role shaping NASA's early research culture and its negotiations over international space cooperation, including early discussions with the Soviet Union that eventually led to the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, negotiated in what became known as the Dryden-Blagonravov agreements. Within NASA he was widely respected as the agency's chief scientist-statesman during the formative Mercury and Gemini program years, and NASA's Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base was renamed the Dryden Flight Research Center in his honor after his death.