Henry Richter receives Lifetime Achievement Award

by CMI staff

Dr Henry Richter, who has previously been interviewed for Creation magazine and is the author of Spacecraft Earth, is one of the most accomplished living creation scientists. He worked for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which was later incorporated into NASA. He helped to develop America’s first satellite, Explorer I.

Dr Richter was given the Radio Club of America Lifetime Achievement award at the 110^th banquet of the Club at the Weston Times Square on November 23, 2019. He was able to make some remarks at the banquet. Dr. Richter wanted to use the opportunity to not only thank the Club for the award and tell his life story, but also to give his Christian testimony. But he only had three minutes in which to do so! But Dr Richter rose to the challenge, and gave us permission to republish his comments below.

I want to thank the radio club and all you folks for the honor of awarding me the lifetime activity award. This came totally unexpectedly and I’m afraid I was somewhat blown away when I received the notice.

I want to acknowledge ham radio and the role it played in leading me into a lifetime of technology. I became interested in ham radio when in the fifth grade. My parents were art teachers at poly high school in Long Beach California. When they taught summer school they needed a place to park me, and so when I was in the fifth grade they made arrangements for me to sit in on the high school ham radio course. And in the prior summer, they made arrangements for me to take the high school chemistry course. The summer after that the chemistry teacher asked me to be the lab assistant for the course. I imagine it was somewhat disconcerting to high school students that have a young squirt handling the stockroom and passing out chemicals and glassware.

I was privileged to work with two Nobel Prize scientists. First was Dr. Linus Pauling. I was an instructor in his freshman chemistry course at Caltech. He later served as the chairman of my final doctoral orals committee. A few years later I worked for Dr. Willard Libby who invited me to be on his staff in the Institute for Geophysics at UCLA.

But let me switch to something which I think is more important to say to you folks. (I intended to say “this is something I said to the JPL staff when they invited me to speak last year at the 60^th anniversary of the Explorer 1 launch”—but I forgot to do it). As a scientist, I became fascinated with this marvelous universe in which we exist. Even more so, this remarkable spacecraft on which we ride on which contains all the features and substances required to allow human life to exist. I believe this is unique in the universe. And then of course there are these marvelous bodies that we have been given. We have a brain consisting of more than 100 billion neurons which are all wired together electrically. This could not have come together accidentally by random events.

To me as an engineer, this all shows an elaborate design. And when I use the word design, that demands a designer. Who can design all this but God Himself? I always believed in the existence of God—somewhere. I was halfway through my life before I found out this being we call God didn’t just exist somewhere in the cosmos but was very personal. In fact, He was desirous of a relationship with me and everybody else. So what did he do? He came to this earth 2000 years ago in the body of Jesus Christ to offer a relationship with mankind. I accepted that offer, which I found made me a Christian. At that point my life changed and since then I’ve had a life of peace, joy and purpose.

I don’t know how many of you in this audience also have made that wonderful discovery of a relationship. If you have, I commend you for it. If not and if this sounds strange to you, do yourself a favor and investigate it for yourself.

Once more I deeply appreciate this honor you’ve given me tonight. God bless you all.