Stever was raised in
Corning, New York, principally by his maternal grandmother. He played football in high school. He graduated from
Colgate University with an undergraduate degree in
physics and then from
California Institute of Technology in 1941 with a
PhD in physics. He joined the staff of the radiation lab at
MIT. In 1942 he began serving the military as a civilian scientific liaison officer based in
London, England until the end of
World War II. After
D-Day he was sent to
France several times to study
German technology. He returned to MIT after the war, serving as
associate dean of engineering there from 1956 to 1959 and then as a department head. In 1965 he became the fifth
President of
Carnegie Mellon University (and the first under that name, in 1967), a position he held until 1972. Stever House, a dorm on Carnegie Mellon's campus is named for him. During this period, he was also chairman of the aeronautics and space engineering board for the
National Academy of Engineering advising NASA and other Federal agencies. He also served as the director of the National Science Foundation from 1972 until 1976. Between 1976 and 1977 he was President
Gerald Ford's
Science Advisor. He also served on the board of trustees of Science Service, now known as
Society for Science & the Public, from 1982 to 2006. Stever received an LL.D. from
Bates College in 1977. In 1997, he received the
Vannevar Bush Award from the National Science Board. Stever died at his home in
Gaithersburg, Maryland on April 9, 2010.
NACA Special Committee on Space Technology Guyford Stever was chairman or member of numerous
advisory committees to the U.S. government. The
NACA's
Special Committee on Space Technology, also called the "Stever Committee," was among the better-known of these. It was a special
steering committee that was formed with the mandate to coordinate various branches of the Federal government, private companies as well as universities within the United States with NACA's objectives and also harness their expertise in order to develop a
space program. . Dr. Stever is fourth to his right.
Hendrik Wade Bode is fourth from the left. Remarkably,
Hendrik Wade Bode, the man who helped develop the robot weapons that brought down the
Nazi V-1 flying bombs over
London during
WWII, was actually serving on the same committee and sitting at the same table as the chief engineer of the
V-2, the other weapon that terrorised London:
Wernher von Braun. As of their meeting on May 26, 1958, committee members, starting clockwise from the left of the adjacent picture, included: == Honors ==