Professor Forest R. Moulton

Professor Forest R. Moulton was born on April 29, 1872 and was awarded a doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1899.

As an Ordnance Department major, he headed the Ballistics Section of the Engineering Division from March 1918 to April 1919, supervising both its theoretical and experimental ballistics work.

Professor Moulton recruited a number of assistants, among whom were some of America's most brilliant mathematicians and physicists. With unlimited energy, a high sense of duty, and initiative, he immediately discarded the awkward methods then in use and used logical, direct, and more accurate treatments for the problems encountered.

Numerous improvements were made in projectile design and in the calculation of range tables under his direction. He determined the type of experiments needed for research and developed certain theories of great practical value.

Professor Moulton's section in World War I was the primitive nucleus of what later became the world famous Ballistic Research Laboratories at Aberdeen Proving Ground. Professor Moulton died on December 7, 1952.