George Pieter Van Reeth was the third and last Secretary General of ELDO, and has spent 27 years with ESA and its predecessors. Born in 1924 in Herselt, Belgium, he studied civil engineering and then law at the Catholic University of Louvain. He obtained a Doctorate in Law in 1952. He practised as an Attorney at the Bar in Antwerp from 1953 until 1962, when he became a legal expert in the NATO Starfighter Monitoring Office in Koblenz, charged with negotiating and managing contracts for the purchase of electronic equipment. Read more