Edward Aloysius Murphy Jr. (January 11, 1918 – July 17, 1990[1]) was an American aerospace engineer who worked on safety-critical systems.
[2] After attending high school in New Jersey, he went to the United States Military Academy at West Point, graduating in 1940.
During World War II he served in the Pacific Theater, India, China and Burma (now known as Myanmar), achieving the rank of major.
It was while here that he became involved with the high-speed rocket sled experiments (USAF project MX981, 1949) which resulted in his invention of Murphy's law.
He worked on crew escape systems for some of the most famous experimental aircraft of the 20th century, including the F-4 Phantom II, the XB-70 Valkyrie, the SR-71 Blackbird, the B-1 Lancer, and the X-15 rocket plane.