Hotz, Robert B. 1914–2006

(Robert Bergmann Hotz)

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born May 29, 1914, in Milwaukee, WI; died of complications from Parkinson's disease, February 9, 2006, in Frederick, MD. Publisher, journalist, and author. Hotz was best known as the editor and publisher of Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine. A 1936 graduate of Northwestern University, he was a reporter in France for the Paris edition of the New York Herald Tribune. Next, he worked as a reporter and editor for the Milwaukee Journal for the three years before World War II. Enlisting in the U.S. Army Air Forces in 1942, Hotz was on the staff of General Claire Chennault's Flying Tigers; he would later cowrite With General Chennault: The Story of the Flying Tigers in 1943. This experience, as well as time served in a B-25 bomber unit, would serve him well in his later magazine work. Decommissioned as a major, Hotz found work as news editor for McGraw-Hill in Washington, DC, before joining the staff at the United Aircraft Corp. in East Hartford, Connecticut, where he was public relations manager for the Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Division. In 1952, he was hired as editor in chief of Aviation Week & Space Technology. Promoted to publisher-editor in 1976, he left the magazine three years later and accepted an appointment by President Ronald Reagan to be on his General Advisory Committee of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. By now regarded as an expert on disarmament and arms control, Hotz served on this committee for the next twelve years under Reagan and then President George H.W. Bush. When the space shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986, Hotz was also put on the commission that investigated the causes of the tragedy. He was a longtime champion of the American space program, while also criticizing its shortcomings, and penned The Promise of the Space Age in 1980. Other publications by Hotz include Pratt and Whitney Aircraft Story (1950) and Both Sides of Suez (1975).

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PERIODICALS

Chicago Tribune, February 17, 2006, section 1, p. 11.