James Smith McDonnell

James Smith McDonnell (* April 9, 1899 in Denver, † August 22 1980 in St. Louis) was an American aircraft designer and businessman.

McDonnell initially completed with success the Princeton University and then earned a master's degree in aeronautical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Initially he worked at the Huff Daland Airplane Company and later moved to the Glenn L. Martin Company, where he remained until 1938. The following year he opened his own company, McDonnell Aircraft Corporation, based in St. Louis. From 1939 to 1967 was president of this company, and from 1962 to 1967 CEO.

After a failed attempt was in January 1963 to merge with the Douglas Aircraft Company, Inc., this was achieved in April 1967. The new company was now called McDonnell Douglas Corporation. McDonnell served that company from 1967 to 1972 as well as CEO and then held until his death in 1980, the post of chairman of the board.

James S. McDonnell Foundation

In 1950 he founded the James S. McDonnell Foundation, with the overall aim to improve the quality of life. The Foundation, based in St. Louis, Missouri, since its founding by its own account has over $ 347 million in funding, especially for scientific research, grants. Grants are awarded for a proposal process with peer review process, in accordance with the principles of the 21st Century Science Initiative. A key focus is the promotion of medical research on brain tumors.

Personal Interests

McDonnell was interested in life on the occult and parapsychological topics. This is also reflected by addresses given by him airplane names like Phantom, Demon, Goblin, and Voodoo Banshee.

In 1982, he donated $ 500,000 to a McDonnell Laboratory for Psychical Research to set up. With the Alpha project carried out in the context of this Institute showed James Randi, how easy parapsychologists are deceiving in their experiments. The McDonnell Laboratory for Psychical Research was then closed.