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When he retired this summer, Norm Augustine was widely considered the best defense executive in the world. As chief executive of Lockheed Martin, Augustine created an international aerospace/defense colossus. But he still defined himself as an engineer.
"I'm not a believer that if you are a good manager, you can manage anything," Augustine says. At Martin Marietta/Lockheed Martin, he practiced "constructive second-guessing" of the 75,000 scientists and engineers on hand: "If one of them suggests something, you need to know if he's violating the second law of thermodynamics."
Augustine went to Princeton on scholarship, where he earned bachelor's and master's degrees in aeronautical engineering. He went to work for Douglas Aircraft, then left for the Pentagon in 1965. Five years later, he was back in the private sector at Vought Missiles and Space - and in 1973, he returned to the Pentagon. By the time Augustine left DOD in 1977 for Martin Marietta, he had won the Distinguished Service Medal, the department's highest civilian award, four times.
Well into his two decades at Martin Marietta, the Berlin Wall fell - and with it US defense budgets. In the post-Cold War shakeout, Augustine masterminded consolidations with pieces of General Electric, General Dynamics, Loral, and Lockheed.
The resulting company, Lockheed Martin, had 1996 sales of nearly $27 billion and net earnings of more than $1.3 billion. Augustine's final acquisition, Northrop Grumman, is expected to be complete by year's end.
While leading the defense industry, Norm Augustine helped lead the way in the community too. A founder of the Maryland Business Roundtable for Education, he has been active with the Boy Scouts and the American Red Cross as well.
It takes more than leadership and brains to succeed in the high-flying aerospace industry.
It takes an aptitude for risk. In his senior year in high school in Denver, only the second in his family to get that far, Norm Augustine applied to only two colleges. He was accepted at Williams and told to send a $50 deposit. But he had his heart set on Princeton, which had not replied. Despite the pleas of his parents, Augustine refused to fork over the $50 for Williams.
The gamble paid off for him - and for Princeton. The former student joined its faculty this fall "to teach engineers that there's more to life than equations" and to help liberal-arts students understand the technology that will shape their lives.
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