Graduate Research Center of the Southwest
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 10
| Founded | 1961, Dallas, by Texas Instruments founders Eugene McDermott, J. Erik Jonsson and Cecil Green |
|---|---|
| Presidents | Lloyd V. Berkner (from 1961); Gifford K. Johnson (1965–1969) |
| Divisions | Atmospheric and space science; geophysics; mathematics and mathematical physics (relativity); biology |
| Renamed | Southwest Center for Advanced Studies (1967 in the university's timeline) |
| Successor | University of Texas at Dallas, established by the Texas Legislature in 1969 |
| Known for | The first Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics, December 1963 |
| Date | 1961 |
| Topics | Propulsion & physics (topic) |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 64 |
| Year | 1961 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 1961 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 6 |
The Graduate Research Center of the Southwest (GRCSW) was a private research institute founded in Dallas in 1961 by the Texas Instruments founders Eugene McDermott, J. Erik Jonsson and Cecil Green. They wanted to bring advanced research and graduate education to North Texas.[1] Its first president, Lloyd Berkner, had sat on the CIA's 1953 Robertson Panel on UFOs.[1][3] Its relativity group organised the first Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics in December 1963, a landmark in the revival of Einstein's theory.[2][5] Renamed the Southwest Center for Advanced Studies, it became the University of Texas at Dallas in 1969.[1][4]
Founding
The three founders had noticed that promising young Texans were leaving the state for their education, while Texas Instruments had to import talent from elsewhere. They set up the GRCSW to change that, as "the foundation for what will become The University of Texas at Dallas".[1] The historian Hubert Goenner describes the Dallas institute as having begun "as a research arm of Texas Instruments". He counts it among the industrial ventures of the 1950s and 1960s that put money into gravitational research.[6]
President John F. Kennedy's prepared speech for the Dallas Trade Mart on 22 November 1963, the day he was assassinated, saluted the centre. "I congratulate those of you here in Dallas," it read, "who have recognized these basic facts through the creation of the unique and forward-looking Graduate Research Center."[1]
The centre
Its first president was Lloyd V. Berkner, a Minnesota-raised engineer and physicist who had joined the Texas Instruments board in 1957.[1] He later received NASA's Public Service Medal in 1966.[1] The physicist Engelbert Schücking remembered him as a former radio operator on Admiral Byrd's Antarctic expeditions, with an upside-down globe at home to show off Berkner Island. Dallas, Schücking said, had hired him to build "a Princeton in Texas".[2] Berkner was succeeded in 1965 by Gifford K. Johnson, who served until 1969 and worked with the University of Texas System to set up UT Dallas.[1]
The centre built up research divisions:[1]
- Atmospheric and space science. Led by Francis Johnson, with William B. Hanson and others.
- Geophysics. Led by Anton Hales.
- Mathematics and mathematical physics. The relativity group, founded by Ivor Robinson, Istvan Ozsváth and Wolfgang Rindler.
- Biology. Led by Carsten Bresch.
Its Founders Building opened in Richardson, Texas, after a year of construction. In its early days the centre worked from "a windowless cube" on the Southern Methodist University campus.[1][2]
Berkner and the Robertson Panel
A decade before he came to Dallas, Berkner was one of the scientists on the CIA-sponsored Robertson Panel, which reviewed UFO reports in January 1953.[3] His part was limited:[3]
- Late arrival. He attended for the first time on the afternoon of the third day, 16 January.
- The draft. He reviewed and approved the chairman's draft report before the final session.
- His analogy. The report credited him with the "noise to signal ratio" analogy, warning that false UFO reports could overload emergency channels.
The panel recommended a public education campaign about UFOs. Nothing in the sources links the Dallas centre's own work to UFOs.[1][3]
The relativity group
The relativity group came about through Alfred Schild, founder of the Center for Research in Relativity Theory at the University of Texas at Austin. When Berkner was looking for scientists, Schild told him: "Get Robinson."[2][5] Ivor Robinson, a British mathematician, arrived at the beginning of 1963. He attracted the Ozsváths and the Rindlers, along with other European relativists.[2] Wolfgang Rindler, who had come to Britain on the Kindertransport, taught at Cornell from 1956 to 1963. He took up his post in Dallas in September 1963 and stayed for the rest of his career. He is known for coining the term "event horizon" and for Rindler coordinates.[4]
Goenner notes that the centre "became a nucleus for gravitational physics", with shorter stays by Jürgen Ehlers (1964–65) and C. Bichteler (1966–68) from Pascual Jordan's Hamburg seminar.[6] Austin's relativists were funded generously by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Their supporters had argued that relativity research was "vital to the survival of the West".[2]
The Texas Symposium
Schücking's account dates the idea to a poolside conversation on 6 July 1963. The centre's chief scientific officer, Lauriston (Larry) Marshall, had urged a small conference to "give a little spice to life". It grew into a large meeting on the newly found quasars.[2] How it came together:[2]
- Money. Schild raised funds from the University of Texas, which is how "Texas" entered the title. Robinson raised money from the centre and from government agencies, and Berkner sent an administrator to Washington for funds.
- Soviet scientists. Robinson lobbied the Soviet Academy of Sciences to let Soviet Jewish scientists such as Vitaly Ginzburg attend. It took several later Texas meetings before Ginzburg and Iosif Shklovsky were allowed to come.
- The proceedings. They were edited by Brenda Biram of the University of Chicago Press.
The symposium met in Dallas in December 1963 and became a biennial series.[2][5] Sources differ on the organisers. The university's timeline credits Robinson and Rindler. Historians of the meeting name Robinson, Schild and Schücking.[1][5] The historians Luisa Bonolis and Juan-Andrés León describe it as a moment when general relativity took its "astrophysical turn" and became an established branch of physics. They say it was conceived partly to "put on the map" the Dallas centre.[5]
Later history
The university's timeline dates the change of name to the Southwest Center for Advanced Studies to 1967. Accounts of the 1963 symposium, though, already use that name.[1][2][5] In 1969 the 61st Texas Legislature passed HB 303, creating "The University of Texas at Dallas". Governor Preston Smith signed it, effective September 1969. That month, 62 graduate students began classes under a handmade sign bearing the new name.[1] Goenner writes that the founders "bequeathed" the centre to the state.[6] Bryce Jordan became UT Dallas's first president. Berkner Hall was later named after the centre's first president.[1]
UFO interest
The centre figures in some UFO literature because of Berkner's Robertson Panel role. It also figures because it was one of several privately funded centres of gravitational physics in the 1950s and 1960s, along with the Glenn L. Martin Company's Research Institute for Advanced Studies in Baltimore.[3][6] Some UFO researchers have linked that wave of gravity funding to hopes of anti-gravity propulsion. The historical sources describe it as theoretical physics. Goenner notes that, to his knowledge, the Air Force-supported gravitation projects of the period were not classified.[6] The Dallas group's documented work was in relativity and astrophysics, and it is remembered for its part in the "golden age" of general relativity.[2][4][6]
People and topics
- Anti-gravity — The idea of cancelling or controlling gravity for propulsion.
On the Timeline
- Ben Guerir guards' sighting (1960) (1960) — An airman in Morocco says glowing UAP prompted jet fighters to scramble.
- Philip Corso's Roswell claims (1961) — Army Col. Philip Corso claims he handled autopsy reports and recovered alien artifacts.
See every 1961 event on the UAP Timeline →
References
- "UT Dallas history: 1961–1969", University of Texas at Dallas · utdallas.edu · archived copy
- "The first Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics" (PDF), Villanova University · homepage.villanova.edu · archived copy
- Robertson Panel — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Wolfgang Rindler — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- The long roots of gravitational-wave research in the Max Planck Society (arXiv) · arxiv.org · archived copy
- arxiv.org · arxiv.org · archived copy
Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia articles “Robertson Panel”, “Wolfgang Rindler”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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