Education
Parkinson attended the United States Naval Academy, graduating in 1957 with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering. While studying there, Parkinson discovered he had a deep interest in controls engineering, which was not a research focus of the Navy at that time. Fortunately, one of Parkinson's electrical engineering professors was an Air Force officer, and urged him to consider switching military branches. Parkinson also knew he wanted to get a Ph. D. later in life, and the Air Force was more receptive to graduate and post-graduate education at this time. For these reasons, Parkinson accepted a commission in the Air Force rather than the Navy after graduation.
Immediately after graduation, Parkinson's superiors offered to send him to study in MIT's “Course Sixteen” a well-known aeronautics and astronautics program. However, having just joined the Air Force, Parkinson decided that he would prefer to spend some time on regular duty to get a feel for the branch. After two years in Southeast Asia, he did matriculate into the MIT program, studying controls engineering, inertial guidance, and electrical engineering. Interestingly, Parkinson worked in the lab of Charles Stark Draper, the namesake for the prestigious Draper Prize which Parkinson went on to win later in his life. After two years of study, Parkinson graduated with a Master of Science in Aeronautics in 1961.
Parkinson was then assigned to work at Central Inertial Guidance Test Facility at Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo, New Mexico. There he continued to study inertial guidance and electrical and controls engineering, gaining a deep understanding of both the academic issues at hand and their application to the actual battlefield. After three years at Holloman, Parkinson was assigned to a Ph. D. program at Stanford University by Robert H. Cannon Jr., graduating in 1966.
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