Perry, William James (1927-…), served as United States secretary of defense from 1994 to 1997, under President Bill Clinton. Perry, a mathematician, had spent much of his career working on defense technology.
Perry was born on Oct. 11, 1927, in Vandergrift, Pennsylvania. In 1946 and 1947, he was a surveyor in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Perry received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mathematics from Stanford University in 1949 and 1950, respectively. He earned a Ph.D. in math from Pennsylvania State University in 1957. From the 1950’s to the 1970’s, he worked for a series of military electronics firms. In 1964, he became a cofounder of ESL, Inc., which developed electronic detection systems.
Perry became a consultant to the Department of Defense in 1967. As the department’s undersecretary for research and engineering, from 1977 to 1981, he urged the armed forces to adopt advanced technology, including “stealth” aircraft, which are hard to detect by radar. From 1981 to 1993, Perry was an investment banker. He was co-director of Stanford’s Center for International Security and Arms Control from 1989 to 1993, when he became deputy secretary of defense.
