Sheila E. Widnall

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Institute Professor Sheila Evans Widnall is an American aerospace researcher and Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For four years, during the Clinton administration, she served as United States Secretary of the Air Force, the first woman to lead an entire branch of the US military in the Department of Defense (Secretary of Transportation Elizabeth Dole had previously been in charge of the United States Coast Guard). She is the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Engineering Systems at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and has served as MIT's Associate Provost. In 1988 she was the President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Widnall was a member of the board of investigation into the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.

[edit] References

• USAF biography
• NASA biography
• MIT biography
• CNN All Politics biographical study of Widnall
• Sheila Widnall's biography

Preceded by General Merrill A. McPeak (acting)

United States Secretary of the Air Force August 6, 1993—October 31, 1997

Succeeded by F. Whitten Peters