Richard C. Orth Jr. ’59

Dick spent his career in the aerospace industry, blending propulsion development with application and teaching. Coming to Princeton from Mineola (N.Y.) High School, where he played football, baseball, and lacrosse, he continued his athletic prowess, playing varsity football and lacrosse while joining Cannon Club, becoming a Distinguished Military Student in Army ROTC, a Keyceptor, and honors graduate in mechanical engineering.

Following graduation, the Army placed Dick on extended leave and assigned him to Columbia University for two years of graduate study in mechanical engineering. Then followed Ranger and paratrooper training and service as a combat engineer company commander in Bavaria. Resigning his commission in 1965, Dick joined the research and development staff at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory with a specialty in design, development, and testing of supersonic combustion ramjets exceeding Mach 5.

During the 1970s, Dick continued graduate studies toward a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering, halted when NASA cancelled the program that would have been the subject of his thesis. In 1978, he took a senior management position with the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics where he met and married Lynn, his second wife. Concomitantly he held positions developing engines to service military satellites in lower Earth orbit, developed a Mach 10 “scramjet” model, and joined the staff of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, retiring in the 1990s. 

Dick died Aug. 31, 2022. The class extends condolences to Lynn and to the sons of his first marriage, Richard, Michael, and Paul.