General Atomics’ Blue Brothers Get Inducted-And That’s a Good Thing

startup companies. (The first to be inducted was Qualcomm founder Irwin Jacobs; followed by Cubic Corp. founder Walter Zable; VC firm Forward Ventures co-founder Ivor Royston; Idec founder William Rastetter; and SAIC founder J. Robert Beyster.)

The two brothers did not reveal many secrets, though, during a 30-minute interview that was part of the award ceremony. After graduating from Yale, the pair traveled the world, returned to their hometown of Denver, CO, and made their fortune in real estate and oil and gas projects, mostly in Canada. That was enough to finance their acquisition of General Atomics from Chevron in 1986. Here are a few other interesting morsels about their careers, and especially about how they see General Atomics:

—Neal: “From age 12, I always had a significant interest in high technology, and especially in nuclear technology. Remember this was 1947…and nuclear reactors offered the promise of providing energy that was too cheap to measure.”

—Neal: “The primary objective of acquiring General Atomics was the fulfillment of (that) long-term dream. The company employed…(scores of) scientists and engineers with expertise in specific fields like nuclear fission and fusion.”

—Linden: “The goal was to carry on the good science and technology development. General Atomics had everything we were interested in.”

—Neal: “We’re devoted to attempting to identify those transformational, technologies that will change the game in terms of baseline industries that can be displaced.”

—Linden: “So it’s free people thinking big thoughts, and having the freedom to do so.”

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.