Laser Scientist Hildreth (Hal) Walker, Jr., and his wife, STEM pioneer Dr. Bettye Davis Walker, were recently honored by Inglewood’s Mayor James Butts, Los Angeles Councilmember Curren Price, and Congresswoman Maxine Waters at Santa Monica College (SMC).
Both Butts and Price were in attendance to bestow government commendations and extend tribute for the Walkers lifetime commitment to teaching students around the world about the importance of learning science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), coupled with the arts.
Thirty minutes after the ceremony, the Walkers were back to taking care of business, teaching Santa Monica College students in a scientist spotlight and career discovery event entitled “Launch! – Air & Space, STEM, and the Arts.”
Brian Hagerty, director of the P3 Innovation Center in Irvine, coordinated the event and Ivor Dawson, founder of the Traveling Space Museum, served as emcee. The program panelists discussed the various careers in each field and highlighted the careers and accomplishments of the Walkers.
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Hal Walker’s work at KORAD Lasers in Santa Monica and the Apollo 11 Lunar Laser Ranging project was emphasized as well. He was the first person to successfully fire the KORAD-1500 Ruby Laser to the moon in 1969 during the Apollo 11 moon landing. The Lunar Ranging Experiment (LURE) was the only interactive planetary experiment conducted for that historic event.
Hal and Dr. Bettye Walker co-founded the African American Male Achievers Network
(A-MAN) STEM International Science Center and the Cape Town Space Society, a chapter of the National Space Society. A-MAN is dedicated to building the leaders and participants in science and technology for tomorrow.
The A-MAN STEM Program is an outgrowth of the first and only pilot educational research project that Dr. Walker received and directed, which was funded by UCLA and focused on elementary school boys.
A board member of the downtown Los Angeles (DTLA) Rotary Club, Dr. Walker has developed partnerships with Rotary Clubs in Vermont, Ohio, Canada, Cape Town, and Pretoria, as well as coordinated the establishment of more than a dozen state-of-the-art Computer Literacy Labs in schools throughout South Africa, funded by Rotary International.
In 1997, President Nelson Mandela invited the Hildreth and Bettye to establish and implement Science & Technology programs in townships in schools across South Africa.
Prof. Hal and Dr. Bettye made history again on February 27, 2019, when South Africa welcomed the opening of the first chapter of the National Space Society (NSS) on the African Continent: The Cape Town Space Society (CTSS). Prof. Hal and Dr. Bettye Walker founded this first-ever Chapter.
To learn more, visit aman.org.
