Frederick Ira Ordway III was born in New York City and raised in Maine. He studied geosciences at Harvard University. He spent several years in graduate study at the University of Paris and other universities in Europe. He worked at a mining company and later for the rocket fuel company Reaction Motors. He spent three years as a technical adviser on the film *2001: A Space Odyssey*. From 1970-1973 he was a faculty member at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. He then became a special assistant to Robert Seamans, the first Director of the Energy Research and Development Agency (now the DOE), where he stayed for the remainder of his career. He was the author, co-author, or editor of more than thirty books and over three hundred articles. He was the longest-serving member of the American Rocket Society, having joined in 1939 and maintained his membership until his death in 2014.
