George Curtis Sponsler III
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2008
George Curtis Sponsler III, 80, a science policy analyst, died Aug. 18 at Winchester Medical Center. He had Parkinson's disease.
Dr. Sponsler ran his own business, Law Mathematics and Technology, from 1970 to 1987, and did work for the National Science
Foundation, the military and other organizations. He spent the next year as a congressional fellow on the staff of Sen. Paul Simon, the late
Illinois Democrat.
Dr. Sponsler was born in Collingswood, N.J., and moved to Washington as a youth. He graduated from Coolidge High School and from
Princeton University. He received a master's degree in 1951 and a doctorate in 1952 from Princeton, both in engineering and in physics. In
1981, he received a law degree from George Washington University.
He worked in the 1950s as a senior scientist with the Hoffman Science Center in Santa Barbara, Calif. He moved to the Navy Bureau of
Ships in 1960 as chief scientist and director of technical analysis and operations research. Three years later, he joined IBM's federal
systems division. In 1968, he became executive secretary of the division of engineering at the National Academy of Science's National
Research Council, a post he held for two years.
He was chairman of Gov. Jimmy Carter's presidential campaign science policy task force and was chairman of a foreign policy study for a
local chapter of the Coalition for a Democratic Majority.
Survivors include his wife of 52 years, Bridget Ruth Sponsler of Leesburg; three children, Freda Jennings-Ellinghaus of Leesburg, Naomi
S. Bechtold of Carmel, Ind., and Curtis Sponsler of Ocoee, Fla.; and 10 grandchildren.
-- Patricia Sullivan