By Patricia Sullivan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Laurence J. Adams, 86, who died Feb. 13 of pneumonia at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, ran one of the country's largest aerospace corporations, helped NASA recover from the Challenger disaster and improved the accuracy of the now-almost-ubiquitous Global Positioning System signals for nonmilitary users.
Mr. Adams, who became president and chief operating officer of Martin Marietta, was "instrumental," press reports said, in fending off a hostile takeover in 1982 of the firm by Bendix. Working under then-chief executive Thomas G. Pownall, Mr. Adams helped steer the company's defense through a 33-day test of financial wills against the larger Bendix. Their successful strategy, to gobble up the competition before it could consume Martin Marietta, was christened the Pac-Man defense by Wall Street analysts.
After retiring from the aerospace and defense contractor in 1986, Mr. Adams served on a National Academy of Sciences panel that advised NASA on the redesign and construction of the solid rocket boosters that had been blamed for causing the 1986 Challenger explosion, which killed seven astronauts shortly after takeoff.
Almost a decade later, he led a National Research Council panel that suggested eliminating a security feature in GPS devices that deliberately degraded the accuracy of signals for most nonmilitary users. The feature, originally a security measure, had become obsolete, he said, and was hurting the development of civilian applications.
Mr. Adams received three awards of the NASA Public Service Medal -- for his work on the solid rocket booster, the Viking Mars Lander and the Skylab programs. In 1988, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, the profession's highest honor.
"He was a very modest man, a very humble man; he was a silent philanthropist," said one of his daughters, Teresa Hayes of Collegeville, Pa.
He was born in Pemberton, Minn., and graduated from the University of Minnesota. He joined Martin Marietta in 1948 and worked his way up the corporate ladder, developing expertise in propulsion, materials structures and dynamics, safety and reliability and systems effectiveness.
Mr. Adams became chief operating officer and president of Martin Marietta in 1983, and he held those positions for three years until he retired. He served on the corporate board for five more years. (Martin Marietta is now part of Lockheed Martin.)
He was former president of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He was also chairman of the Challenger Center for Space Science Education and served on the board of Maryland's McDaniel College, where he endowed a chair and scholarship for graduate students working in the field of special education.
In addition to his daughter, survivors include his wife of 56 years, Marguerite "Peggy" Adams of Potomac; four other children, Stephen Adams of Aurora, Colo., Michael Adams of Potomac, Mary Louise Sterge of Malvern, Pa., and Susan Adams of Gaithersburg; and seven grandchildren.
