Aerophysicist, artillery designer and ballistics expert
McGill U.; Space Research Corp., Vermont; Brussels
Gerald Bull was born in North Bay, Ontario. He studied aerophysics at the University of Toronto. While testing missiles for a government project, he realized that scientific instruments could also be fired from a gun and survive, if put in a proper casing. This led to his great dream--to build a supergun that could launch objects like satellites into space for less cost than rockets could. Saddam Hussein, leader of Iraq, offered him a chance to build his gun, but things went wrong, and Gerald Bull was killed by assassins in 1990.
More detail: Gerald Bull was a brilliant but controversial expert in ballistics and gunnery. (Ph.D. aerophysics, U. of Toronto, 1951) While working as a research scientist for the Canadian government on a missile called Velvet Glove, Bull showed that scientific instruments could survive the force of being shot from a cannon. He wanted to build giant guns that could fire satellites or explosives into space. From 1961 to 1967, he co-directed McGill U.'s High Altitude Research Projectile (HARP) program. Bull's team launched hundreds of projectiles into the upper atmosphere and collected valuable data. When this program was canceled, Bull turned to weapons development. He was sentenced and jailed for one year in 1980 for illegally selling weapons to South Africa. Saddam Hussein offered the former Canadian his last chance to build a supergun--a project that almost certainly led to his assassination in Brussels in 1990.
Sources: Maclean's, April 22, 1991
© 1996 Softshell Small Systems Software Design Inc.
