Robert Seamans

Robert Channing Seamans Jr. (October 30, 1918 – June 28, 2008) was an MIT professor who served as NASA deputy administrator and 9th United States secretary of the Air Force.

Birth and education He was born in Salem, Massachusetts, to Pauline and Robert Channing Seamans. His great-great-grandfather was Otis Tufts. Seamans attended Lenox School, in Lenox, Massachusetts; earned a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering from Harvard University in 1939 or 1940; Seamans retired from his duties as Secretary of the Air Force on May 15, 1973 and was replaced by John L. McLucas. In 1975, Seamans was elected to the American Philosophical Society. In 2001, the Sea Education Association named their new sailing research ship SSV Robert C. Seamans, in honor of their former Chairman and Trustee. In the 1998 HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon, Seamans was played by Dann Florek. His last TV interview is featured in the Discovery Science Channel Series Moon Machines episode on the Apollo guidance and navigation system, recorded in the autumn of 2007 and first broadcast shortly after his death in the summer of 2008.