T. Keith Glennan

T. Keith Glennan was an American engineer and administrator who served as the first Administrator of NASA from 1958, when the agency was created, until 1961. Previously a sound engineer and studio manager in the film industry and later president of Case Institute of Technology, he had also directed the Manhattan Project's Clinton Laboratories during the Second World War and served on the Atomic Energy Commission before President Dwight Eisenhower selected him to establish and organize the new civilian space agency out of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and other government research units. During his tenure NASA absorbed the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, established the Mercury program to launch the first American astronauts into space, and began early lunar and planetary probe efforts, setting the organizational and administrative foundation on which the Apollo program was later built. He left NASA when Eisenhower's term ended in January 1961 and returned to academic administration, later serving again as president of Case Western Reserve University.