[1] Born in Newark, New Jersey, Starr received an electrical engineering degree in 1932 and a Ph.D. in physics in 1935 from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
In 1967 he became the dean of the UCLA School of Engineering and Applied Science.
[2] Six years later he founded the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and was its first president.
Starr was a member of the board of directors at the George C. Marshall Institute, a member of the board of science advisors of the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) and, like most other members of that board, he signed the Leipzig Declaration on Global Climate Change.
The day before his death he celebrated his 95th birthday at an EPRI ceremony.