Frank E. Rom
Open-knowledge reference entry
Frank Ernest Rom Sr. was an engineer who worked for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and it successor, the National Air and Space Administration (NASA). He wrote many papers on the uses of nuclear propulsion for rockets for interplanetary travel. In the 1970s, he was involved in NASA's exploration of solar, wind and tidal energy sources as alternative to fossil fuels, and found his own solar energy company, Rom-Aire Solar Energy Products, based on his patents for air-based solar heating and collecting systems.
Early life
Frank Ernest Rom Sr. was born in Brooklyn, New York on August 16, 1926, the son of Frank and Josefa Rom, a pair of immigrants from Austria. He was educated in public schools in New York City, and attended Cooper Union there. During World War II, he served in the US Navy. After the war he entered Cornell University, from which he graduated both bachelor's and master's degrees.
NASA
In 1948, Rom joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, where he met his future wife, Marilyn McNamara.
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This entry incorporates text from “Frank E. Rom” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.