Caltech Professor Emeritus Wins $459,000 Japan Prize

William Hayward Pickering, professor emeritus at Caltech, has won the 1994 Japan Prize in aerospace technology, said Masami Ito, chairman of the Science and Technology Foundation of Japan.

Winners receive the equivalent of $459,000. The awards, described as Japan’s version of the Nobel Prize, are to be presented April 27 in a ceremony in Tokyo.

Pickering, 83, lives in La Canada Flintridge. He designed and developed radio systems in 1944 for distant measurements. These telemetry systems have been adopted worldwide in space research and many industrial fields, Ito said in an announcement.

He said triumphs of the U.S. space program to which Pickering contributed include the lunar topography survey by the Ranger and Surveyor spacecraft, the exploration of Mercury, Venus and Mars by the Mariner series spacecraft, and the soft landing on Mars by Viking.

Also named as a winner was Dr. Arvid Carlsson, 70, a Swedish scientist whose discoveries led to new chemical treatments for mental disorders.

The two winning candidates were selected by the Japan Prize Selection Committee from among 436 nominees.