Dale Raymond Corson (April 5, 1914 – March 31, 2012) was an American physicist and academic administrator who was the eighth president of Cornell University.

[1] After receiving his PhD, Corson spent the next two years as a post-doctoral fellow in the Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley to help construct a 60-inch cyclotron.

Corson led the university through the final years of the Vietnam War and student activism, and through the economic recession of the 1970s.

New employment procedures were implemented, and increasing numbers of women were appointed to the faculty and to high administrative positions.

He recommended the formation of an Affirmative Action Advisory Board to monitor the status of women and minorities and to propose more effective procedures.

It was a special steering committee that was formed with the mandate to coordinate various branches of the Federal government, private companies as well as universities within the United States with NACA's objectives and also harness their expertise in order to develop a space program.

[4] Dr. Corson therefore played a pivotal role in the process of establishing the nascent United States space program.