C. William Murray, 81, a retired applied mathematician at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, died Aug. 13 at a nursing home in Cooperstown, N.Y. He had complications from Parkinson’s disease.
The death was confirmed by his wife, Carolyn Murray.
Mr. Murray, known as Bill, worked in Northern Virginia at the research and development companies Melpar and Aero Geo Astro before joining Goddard in 1966. During his 21-year NASA career, he worked on the Apollo program’s manned spaceflights to the moon. He wrote analyses concerning the spacecrafts’ entry into space and reentry trajectory to Earth.
Charles William Murray was a native of Amsterdam, N.Y., and served in the Navy from 1951 to 1957. He was a 1954 mathematics graduate of Duke University in Durham, N.C., and received a master’s degree in mathematics from Catholic University in 1961.
The former Annandale resident lived for about a decade in Cooperstown.
Survivors include his wife of 58 years, Carolyn Ruby Murray of Cooperstown; three children, Douglas S. Murray of Alexandria, Barbara Sullivan of Cooperstown and Anne Woodring of Annandale; a sister; six grandchildren; and a great-granddaughter.
— Adam Bernstein
