George Joseph Jacobs, 86, retired chief of biosciences for the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration, died of cardiac arrest Dec. 24 at a
hospital in San Diego.
Mr. Jacobs's 20-year NASA career began at the agency's inception in 1959.
He administered grants for the development of low-gravity flight suits,
freeze-dried food and animal migration satellite tracking systems.
He was also instrumental in the development of a program that used
infrared satellite sensors to photograph and map the earth's biological and
geological resources.
When he retired from NASA in 1979, he moved with his wife to a home they
designed in Montgomery, Pa.
For the last six years, he traveled in the United States and abroad. He
was wintering on the West Coast when he fell ill.
Mr. Jacobs, an Army Air Forces veteran of World War II, was a native of
New York and former Bethesda resident.
He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Mississippi,
a master's degree in zoology from the University of West Virginia and a
doctorate in physiology from George Washington University.
In the mid-1950s, he spent two years in Japan studying the long-term
affects of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a researcher for the
U.S. Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission.
A student of herpetology throughout his life, he amassed a large
collection of frogs and salamanders, which he later donated to the
Smithsonian Institution.
He became a Smithsonian research associate in vertebrate zoology, wrote
articles on herpetology and served as managing editor of Copeia, the
official journal of the Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists.
Among his writing credits is "The English-Russian, Russian-English
Dictionary of Vertebrate Zoology."
His wife, Joan Jacobs, died in 1997.
Survivors include three children, Tamara Jacobs Bell of Barnesville, Ga.,
Douglas Bram Jacobs of Chico, Calif., and Jeremy Fischer Jacobs of
Rockville, Md.; a sister; and five grandchildren.
