Dr. Allen Peterson—"Dr. Pete" to his many associates and "Pete" to his close friends—divided his time between his responsibilities at Stanford University and at SRI (presumably 50/50 but probably more like 100/100). Beginning in 1958, Dr. Pete became a bridge between Stanford and SRI in his fields of interest: high tech computers, digital signal processing, VLSI design, communications systems, radar systems, and remote sensing systems.
Dr. Pete's early responsibility at SRI was as Manager of the Communications and Propagation Laboratory. When the Laboratory grew to about 150 people, Dr. Pete turned over management of the Laboratory to Ray Leadabrand and Ray Vincent so that he could work hands-on with the engineers and scientists on urgent technical problems of the day. He was well respected in the military science and technology community, particularly in radio physics and communications. He contributed to the planning and implementation of the International Geophysical Year.
Dr. Pete had a long involvement with the physics of atmospheric nuclear explosions and their effects on the ionosphere and on radio-wave propagation. He organized SRI's participation in the atmospheric nuclear tests in the summer of 1958 (TEAK, ORANGE, and ARGUS) in cooperation with the then Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratory. Later, Dr. Pete attended the atmospheric nuclear test-ban-treaty negotiations in Geneva shortly after the ARGUS test as technical advisor to the U.S. Delegation to the Geneva Conference on Discontinuation of Nuclear Tests. In the early 1960s, he worked on the FISHBOWL atmospheric nuclear tests in the Pacific.
Dr. Pete was a persuasive negotiator both within Stanford and within the Government. After helping get approval to build the 150-ft parabolic-dish antenna in the Stanford antenna field, he helped use the SRI dish and a university transmitter for the then new field of radar (and some radio) astronomy. Dr. Pete used a similar antenna in Scotland in one of the first U.S. satellite-communications experiments.
Throughout the Cold War, SRI was squarely on the map because of Dr. Pete's efforts. His outstanding engineering and scientific knowledge had a huge influence on SRI programs and on the technical development of all who worked with him.