Harold R. Kaufman (born November 24, 1926 - January 4, 2018) was an American physicist, noted for his development of electrostatic ion thrusters for NASA during the 1950s and 1960s.
[1] Born in Audubon, Iowa, USA, in 1926, Kaufman grew up in Evanston, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.
[2] He trained in electrical engineering during World War II through an electronic technician program in the US Navy.
[3] He joined CSU as staff in 1974, then left academia in 1984 to work at Kaufman & Robinson, Inc., in Fort Collins, Colorado.
[8] In September 2016, Kaufman was inducted into the NASA Hall of Fame for his advances in ion propulsion.