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Robert McNamara
Sign in to saveAlso known as McNamara, Robert Strange McNamara, Robert S. McNamara
American businessman and Secretary of Defense (1916-2009)
OverviewAI-generated
Robert McNamara (1916–2009) was an author whose career began in 1943. His written works include *Sociology As Everyday Life*, *Abiding Time*, *Personalism of Edith Stein*, *Homelessness in America*, and *The Fog Of War*. Open Library lists 27 works associated with the name Robert McNamara, while Crossref records 5.
McNamara received recognition in the Legion Of Merit collection and the American Academy Arts Sciences collection. He is the subject of 1,161 other encyclopedia articles. A quote attributed to him states, "I would rather have a wrong decision made than no decision at all."
Synthesized by Vinony from 17 facts across 8 sources: Wikidata, Last.fm, Crossref, Wikiquote, MusicBrainz, Open Library, Vinony collections, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- human
- Gender
- male
- Citizenship
- United States
- Place of birth
- San Francisco
- Place of death
- Washington, D.C.
- Occupation
- military personnel
- Position held
- President of the World Bank Group
- Educated at
- Harvard Business School
- Employer
- Ford Motor Company
- Political party
- Republican Party (United States)
- Languages spoken
- English language
- Religion
- Presbyterianism
- Conflict
- World War II
- Military rank
- Lieutenant Colonel
- Image
- Robert McNamara at a cabinet meeting, 22 Nov 1967.jpg
Show 10 more facts
- member of
- American Philosophical Society
- Commons category
- Robert McNamara
- date of death
- 2009-07-06
- date of birth
- 1916-06-09
- Commons gallery
- Robert McNamara
- place of burial
- Arlington National Cemetery
- start of work period
- 1943-00-00
- name in native language
- Robert Strange McNamara
- writing language
- English language
- P12749
- Juncus trifidus
Sources (11)
via Wikidata · CC0
~38 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Robert Strange McNamara (/ˈmæknəˌmærə/; June 9, 1916 – July 6, 2009), also known by his initials RSM, was an American businessman and government official who served as the eighth United States secretary of defense from 1961 to 1968 under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson at the height of the Cold War. He remains the longest-serving secretary of defense, having remained in office over seven years . He played a major role in promoting the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. McNamara was responsible for the institution of systems analysis in public policy, which developed into the discipline known today as policy analysis.
McNamara graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard Business School. He served in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. After World War II, Henry Ford II hired McNamara and a group of other Army Air Force veterans to work for the Ford Motor Company, reforming Ford with modern planning, organization, and management control systems. After briefly serving as Ford's president, McNamara accepted an appointment as secretary of defense in the Kennedy administration.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Robert McNamara” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.