Embry-Riddle Awards Honorary Degree to Father of Aviation Safety

Lederer, a pioneer of 20th century aviation safety, served as an aviation risk management specialist for more than half a century. He is a lifelong innovator of numerous programs designed to save lives and reduce airline accident rates.

Born in 1902 in New York, N.Y., Lederer celebrated his 100th birthday earlier this year. In his lifetime, he witnessed the birth of aviation and unprecedented changes in an ever-evolving industry.

Lederer received a B.S. in mechanical engineering with aeronautical options in 1924 and a mechanical engineering degree in 1925 from New York University (NYU). He served as assistant to the director of NYU's Guggenheim School of Aeronautics.

Lederer worked as an aeronautical engineer for the U.S. Air Mail Service in 1926-27. As the only engineer for the world's first system of scheduled air transportation, he was responsible for modifications to aircraft, writing specifications, and approving the reconstruction of accident airplanes.

While employed with the Air Mail Service, Lederer met Charles Lindbergh and inspected Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis the day before his historic flight across the Atlantic Ocean.

In 1940, he was selected to be the director of the Safety Bureau for the U.S. Civil Aeronautics Board (the forerunner of the National Transportation Safety Board) and was responsible for all civil aircraft accident investigations.

During World War II, Lederer served as the director of training and head of the administrative section of the Air Lines War Training Institute, which trained about 10,000 U.S. Army pilots and 35,000 maintenance technicians for the Air Transport Command.

Lederer organized the Flight Safety Foundation (FSF) officially in 1947 and, until his retirement in 1967, conducted many FSF research projects, international exchanges of accident prevention information, and safety seminars. He was concurrently the director of Cornell University's Guggenheim Aviation Safety Research Center.

In 1956, Lederer was selected to serve on President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Aviation Facilities Investigation Group, which organized the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and modernized air traffic control.

After his retirement from the FSF in 1967, Lederer was asked by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to establish a new office of Manned Space Flight Safety. In 1970, Lederer was appointed the director of safety for all NASA activities.

He has received more than 100 awards during his lifetime, including the 1999 Edward Warner Award, one of civil aviation's highest honors; the NASA Exceptional Services Medal; the U.S. FAA Distinguished Service Medal; the Guggenheim Medal; the Amelia Earhart Medal; the Von Baumhauer Medal of the Royal Dutch Aeronautical Society; and the Airline Medical Directors Award. In January 2000, Air Safety magazine, published by Pakistan International Airlines, named Lederer "aviation's man of the century."

Embry-Riddle, the world's largest, fully accredited university specializing in aviation and aerospace, meets the needs of students and industry through its educational, training, research, and consulting activities. Embry-Riddle educates 24,000 students annually through the master's level at residential campuses in Prescott, Ariz., and Daytona Beach, Fla., at more than 150 teaching centers in the United States and Europe, and through distance learning. The Prescott campus has a student population of more than 1,500.