John Stapp

Colonel John Paul Stapp, (11 July 1910 – 13 November 1999) M.D., Ph.D., was an American career U.S. Air Force officer, flight surgeon, physician, biophysicist, and pioneer in studying the effects of acceleration and deceleration forces on humans. He was a colleague and contemporary of Chuck Yeager, and became known as "the fastest man on earth".

Early years

John Paul Stapp was born in Bahia, Brazil, a son of Reverend and Mrs. Charles F. Stapp, American missionaries. He studied at Brownwood High School, Brownwood, Texas, and San Marcos Baptist Academy in San Marcos, Texas. In 1931, he received a bachelor's degree from Baylor University, Waco, Texas, an MA from Baylor in 1932, a PhD in Biophysics from the University of Texas at Austin in 1940, and an MD from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, in 1944. He interned for one year at St. Mary's Hospital in Duluth, Minnesota. Stapp was later awarded an honorary Doctor of Science from Baylor University.

Military career

Stapp entered the Army Air Corps on 5 October 1944 as a medical doctor. On 10 August 1946, he was assigned to the Aero Medical Laboratory at Wright Field as a project officer and medical consultant in the Biophysics Branch. His first assignment included a series of flights testing various oxygen systems in unpressurized aircraft at 40,000 ft (12.2 km). One of the major problems with high-altitude flight was the danger of "the bends" or decompression sickness. Stapp's work resolved that problem as well as many others, which allowed the next generation of high-altitude aircraft and the HALO insertion techniques. He was assigned to the deceleration project in March 1947.