Is this the same Pournelle who wrote "Lucifer's Hammer"?
Originally Posted by JD Barleycorn
Yes, co-written with Larry Niven.
Jerry is almost as close as you can get to a Renaissance Man these days.
He was in Human Factors at Boeing long before that, involved in the original astronaut selection, and he edited a (classified) technology study of everything that was known at the time about ICBM technology and what was needed. (He mentioned, once or twice, that he was cleared for every piece of what went into the document, but the final document was so comprehensive that it was classified higher than he, the editor, was cleared for, so he couldn't see the final document, even though he'd basically (re)written every word of it.)
He also got the shock of his life when he discovered that Ronald Reagan, while governor of California, was almost as knowledgeable in political science as Pournelle was. The governor was visiting Pepperdine, the professors were giving talks about their work, Jerry did his, and got to the traditional "Any questions?" part. Reagan asked two questions, and the questions he asked made it clear that not only had he understood, in detail, everything Jerry had said, but he knew the field almost as well as Jerry did. When Jerry asked him how, Reagan explained that he'd always been a quick study for lines, and there was a lot of downtime on a TV studio set during production, so Reagan always carried a few good books to work, and read them during downtime.