Physicist in the U.S.
Goetz followed his supervisor of his doctoral thesis to the US in 1957 with a
Fulbright stipend, and got a position as physics research associate at the
University of Maryland. He married Brigitte Beckmann in 1960, and became neighbor as well as friends with Karl-Ludwig Stellmacher, a German – American mathematician. After his successful PhD promotion he was hired by
NASA in January 1963 at their
Langley Research Center as a researcher. The agency promoted his naturalization to US citizenship and provided him with responsibility over a current research project. He had to convince the NASA and
General Electric engineers that the project was unviable and had to be restructured substantially. At the same time, his experimental research results from his PhD thesis became published and resulted in the application for two patents.
Solar physics In 1967, the NASA HQ offered Goetz Oertel a senior position in Washington, D.C. and thus enabled a continuation of his theoretical work. When he was finally named leader of the program of the ATM of
Skylab, consequentially becoming responsible for continuously increasing roles and functions, and finally was promoted Chief of Solar Physics, he had to come to an end with his experimental work, albeit successfully.
Nuclear energy In 1974, the
Nixon administration drafted its Federal Executive Development Program, with the goal to reduce the isolation of the Federal ministries, specifically among the higher level civil servants, the so-called super-grades. As a consequence, management skills gained a higher weight than the academic knowledge of the subject matter. Around 8.000 mid-level civil servants had to apply for 25 positions. Oertel applied successfully and was offered „free choice“ among the Federal ministries. After the introduction course in
Charlottesville, South Carolina he became, for six months each, scientific advisor to the President and at the
Office of Management and Budget of the President's Office – Department for Space, Science and Energy. In 1975, he was appointed Head of the Astronomy Program at the
Ministry of Science, and in 1976 Chief of Staff of the Assistant Administrator for nuclear energy. From 1977 to 1984, he served as director for nuclear energy facilities (including nuclear waste- and secondary products of the defense sector) in the newly created
Department of Energy. New positions at the
Savannah River Site in
South Carolina in Albuquerque brought responsibilities for 32,000 employees and an overall budget of USD 3 billion.
Astronomy Oertel returned to the Ministry of Energy in 1985 as deputy assistant. Dealing with the consequences of the
Challenger space shuttle accident and the
Chernobyl disaster, the appointment to President and Chief Executive of
AURA came at a suitable moment. AURA operated the
Hubble Space Telescope, space- and solar observatories in Arizona, New Mexico and Chile, and, more recently, also the
Gemini Observatorys in Hawaii and Chile. After thirteen successful years at this position, Oertel finally declined a five-year renewal of his contract. ==Honorations==