User:JustinTime55/sandbox/Nicholas E. Golovin (physicist)

Nicholas E. Golovin (1912-1969) was a physicist born in Odessa, Ukraine, who emigrated to the United States and worked in various capacities for the federal government's executive branch after World War II, most lately as a technical advisor for aviation and space in the White House Office of Science and Technology from 1962 to 1968. In 1962, at the behest of President John F. Kennedy's Science Advisor Jerome Wiesner, he played an antagonistic role towards NASA's decision to use the lunar orbit rendezvous mode to achieve a piloted lunar landing. In 1960, he was NASA's Deputy Associate Administrator, then left to join private industry, and in 1961 he directed a joint NASA-Department of Defense Large Launch Vehicle Planning Group.

Prior to working for NASA, he was director of technical operations in 1959 for the Advanced Research Projects Agency, and in 1958 was chief scientist for the White Sands Missile Range. He held several administrative positions with the National Bureau of Standards from 1949 to 1958, during which time he obtained a PhD in physics from George Washington University in 1955. From 1946 to 1948, he worked for the Naval Research Laboratory.

Golovin took a leave of absence from the OST in 1968 as a research associate at Harvard University and as a fellow at the Brookings Institution, and died on April 1, 1969.