Photo: Monica King/US Department of Defense / Public domain (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
Ash Carter is a rare type to me: a physicist who ended up running the Pentagon. Trained at Yale and Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, he started in hard science before becoming the 25th US Secretary of Defense from 2015 to 2017. I find that combination telling, a defense leader who actually understood the technology he was deciding about. His 2019 Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun hints at how seriously allies took him. After government he led Harvard's Belfer Center. Carter died in 2022 at 68, and the loss of that scientist-statesman blend feels hard to replace.
Overview
Ashton Baldwin Carter (September 24, 1954 – October 24, 2022) was an American government official and academic who served as the 25th United States secretary of defense from February 2015 to January 2017. He later served as director of the Belfer Center for Science & International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School. Carter began his career as a physicist.
Summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1. Profile
- Name (English)
- Ash Carter
- Name (Japanese)
- アシュトン・カーター
- Reading
- あしゅとん・かーたー
- Born
- September 24, 1954 – October 24, 2022
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Libra / Horse
- Origin
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
- Blood type
- Private
- Height
- Private
- Agency
- Private
- Occupation
- politician / physicist / university teacher
2. Background
- Elementary school
- Private
- Junior high
- Private
- High school
- Abington Senior High School
- University
- Yale College
Awards & achievements
- Fellow of the American Physical Society
- Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- 1976 Rhodes Scholarship
- 1988 Joseph A. Burton Forum Award
- 2019 Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun
3. Relationships
- Spouse
- Private
- Children
- Private
- Parents
- Private
- Siblings
- Private
4. Personality
Motto
Private
6. Links
Politician — see all → · Physicist — see all → · More people from United States →
7. About this entry
Tags
- Last updated
- 2026-06-02
Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public items are marked "Private / Unknown". English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.