Militaryיצחק בר-יצחק

Itzhack Y. Bar-Itzhack

Itzhack Y. Bar-Itzhack was an Israeli professor of aeronautics at the Technion who worked in the field of navigation.

1937 to 2007Strapdown inertial navigationApollo lunar lander navigation algorithmSpacecraft attitude determination researchDean of Technion aerospace faculty

Occupation: military flight engineer
Education: Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, University of Pennsylvania

Itzhack Y. Bar-Itzhack was born in 1937 in Metula

Bar-Itzhack was born in Metula in 1937. He grew up in Herzliya and later lived in Haifa.

He joined the Paratroopers in 1955. During his service he took part in the reprisal operations and the Sinai War.

He earned bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering at the Technion. He completed a doctorate in electrical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania in 1971.

After his doctorate he worked on NASA's Apollo program, helping develop the navigation algorithm of the lunar landing vehicle. He was a pioneer of strapdown inertial navigation and worked with researchers at NASA's Goddard center on spacecraft attitude determination. At the Technion he held a chair in the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering from 1971 to 2006, became a professor in 1984, headed the aeronautical laboratory and later served as dean.

He was a Fellow of the AIAA and the IEEE and received awards from NASA. He served as president of the Israeli Association for Automatic Control and received the IEEE Kershner Award in 2004. He died in 2007.