Jack Parsons (rocket engineer)

John Whiteside Parsons , better known as Jack Parsons, was an American rocket engineer and rocket propulsion researcher, chemist, inventor, businessman, expert witness, writer, socialite, and Thelemite occultist. Associated with the California Institute of Technology , Parsons was one of the principal founders of both the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Aerojet Engineering Corporation. He invented the first rocket engine using a castable, composite rocket propellant, and pioneered the advancement of both liquidfuel and solidfuel rockets.

Marvel Whiteside Parsons was born on October 2, 1914, at the Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles. His parents, Ruth Virginia Whiteside and Marvel H. Parsons , had moved to California from Massachusetts the previous year, purchasing a house on Scarf Street in downtown Los Angeles. Although their son was his fathers namesake, he was known in the household as Jack. Their marriage broke down soon after Jacks birth, when Ruth discovered that his father had made numerous visits to a prostitute, and she filed for divorce in March 1915. Parsons father returned to Massachusetts after being publicly exposed as an adulterer, with Ruth forbidding him from having any contact with Jack. Parsons father would later join the armed forces, reaching the rank of major, and marry a woman with whom he had a son named Charles a halfbrother whom Jack would only meet once. Although she retained her exhusbands surname, Ruth started calling her son John many friends throughout his life knew him as Jack. Rut

Source: Wikipedia