WSERAA-2024

Gunther Karger, born in 1933 was sent out of Germany in 1939 as a six-year-old boy to Sweden to escape the Holocaust to which he lost his entire family. He survived two foster homes and one orphanage in Sweden then was sent to the USA alone and penniless as a 13-year-old war orphan to live in two more foster homes. He graduated High School, received his BSEE from LSU, and attended further educational programs at the University of Illinois, and graduate courses at Bell Laboratories. Further. He graduated with an MBA from the Alexander Hamilton Institute and multiple financial and investment courses receiving the highest Wall Street accreditations. Gunther is a multi-disciplinary engineer and a futurist who participated in the creation and evolution of communications over the past half century including open access networks such as the Internet, cellular networks, and intelligence systems. He was the communications engineer and project manager in a special assignment in President John F. Kennedy’s National Security office during the Cold War where he created AFSACS, the Air Force Survivable Airborne Communication System. Gunther was the engineer responsible for the site selection of the Western Union Transcontinental Microwave transmission system(first ever), one of three engineers who developed the first active Communication satellite, Courier 1B. Gunther Karger served the IEEE in various roles including Professional Groups Coordinator for the Northern New Jersey IRE and later IEEE Section, Editor of the National IRE Professional Technical Group on Communication Systems later becoming the IEEE Technical Group on Communications serving five years. He served as an organizer of the National Communications Symposium which eventually became COMSOC. He also served as IEEE Section Chairman at Cape Canaveral during the Apollo Moon project where he was responsible for the range and space communications planning and was inducted as a Space Pioneer and Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society. Gunther Kargerbecame an executive of a major airline as project manager of the industry’s effort to create V’STOL and STOL aircraft, transferred his knowledge of communication network topology to the creation of a revenue forecasting model and system which he managed for 15 years as director (Eastern Airlines). Gunther Karger, with his wife, Shirley, founded the Discovery Letter, a nationally circulated investment advisory report focused on emerging companies in the communications sector and lectured at investment conferences including Ceasars Palace in Las Vegas, and served as a lecturer aboard major cruise ships in recent years. He is the author of the books “Thieves on Wall Street”, “Wall Street Fraud” and “My Life-Rising from the Ashes of the Holocaust and Global Society Rising” Gunther Karger is a Life Senior Member of IEEE Professional Member of Eta Kappa Nu and Member for Life of Missile, Range, and Space Pioneers( the people who created America’s space program).