Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in recognition of Dr. Edward C. Stone, retiring Director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. After ten years of distinguished service at JPL, Dr. Stone will be returning to full-time teaching and research at the California Institute of Technology, where he has taught since 1967. Dr. Stone, the David Morrisroe Professor of Physics, has been widely regarded as an energetic and thoughtful leader at JPL.
Since his first cosmic-ray experiments on Discoverer satellites in 1961, Dr. Stone has been a principal investigator on nine NASA spacecraft missions and a co-investigator on five other NASA missions for which he developed high resolution instruments for measuring the isotopic and elemental composition of energetic cosmic-ray nuclei. Using these instruments, Dr. Stone and his colleagues undertook some of the first studies of the isotopic composition of three distinct samples of matter. During his tenure at JPL, Dr. Stone's many accomplishments include Galileo's five-year orbital mission to Jupiter, the launch of Assini to Saturn, as well as a new generation of Earth sciences satellites such as TOPEX/Poseidon and SeaWinds, and the spectacularly successful Mars Pathfinder landing in 1997.
He has transformed the direction of JPL from administering a few large projects to managing many new, smaller exploration missions. Dr. Stone's vision has revolutionized the way JPL does business, thus expanding its impact on the field of astrophysics and planetary science. He is a remarkable scientist, whose brilliance is coupled with his ability to lead. Dr. Stone exemplifies integrity, energy, and leadership, and his deep commitment to JPL and its goals has been the touchstone of the Laboratory's success. I would like to commend Dr. Stone for his extraordinary dedication and thank him for his decade of service.