Henry Earl Singleton (November 27, 1916 – August 31, 1999) was an American electrical engineer, business executive, and rancher/land owner. Singleton made significant contributions to aircraft inertial guidance and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. He co-founded Teledyne, Inc., one of America's most successful conglomerates, and was its chief executive officer for three decades. Late in life, Singleton became one of the largest holders of ranchland in the United States. Early background Henry Singleton was raised on a small ranch near Haslet, Texas, a few miles northwest of Fort Worth. His higher education began in 1933 at North Texas Agricultural College, Arlington. After two years there, he received an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, starting over as a Plebe (Freshman) in 1935. His roommate was fellow Plebe George A. Roberts, who would later join him in developing Teledyne. During his first two years at Annapolis, Singleton ranked first in mathematics out of a class of 820 students. A reoccurring medical problem made it necessary for him to leave the academy in 1938. After the Academy, Singleton elected to study electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and graduated in 1940, receiving both bachelor's (Sc.B.) and master's (Sc.M.) degrees in this field. During his first year there, he was a member of a three-man team that won the Putnam Prize in the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, administered annually by the Mathematical Association of America. Another member of the team was Richard P. Feynman, a future Nobel Prize Laureate. As described later, Singleton eventually returned to MIT for doctoral studies, earning the Sc.D. degree, also in electrical engineering, in 1950. Initial professional work After graduating from MIT in 1940 and unable to meet the physical requirements for military service, Singleton took a Civil Service position as an electrical engineer at the Naval Ordnance Laboratory, then located at the Navy Yard, Washington, D.C. Singleton was involved in analyzing a process that was eventually called “degaussing,” which gives protection to cargo ships from German-laid magnetic naval mines by reducing the magnetic field surrounding a vessel's steel hull. In 1942, Philip M. Morse, a professor at MIT, organized the Anti-Submarine Warfare Operations Research Group (ASWORG) on the staff of Admiral Ernest King, then Chief of Naval Operations. Having shown his mathematical skills in the degaussing developments, Singleton was invited to join the ASWORG. In doing so,