Marvin A. Biren

Marvin A. Biren, of Chestnut Hill, who spent 63 years as a guided missile engineer at Draper Laboratory, died on May 17, 2023 at age 89.

He never retired from Draper because – as he put it – he was having too much fun. He often said “they are going to have to shoot me out of the saddle”.

He was born in Manhattan and grew up in Queens. From earliest childhood he wanted to be an inventor. He received a B.S. in physics from MIT in 1955. While at MIT, he was a member of Pershing Rifles, ROTC, and the MIT Chorale Society. In 1957-1958 he served 2 years as a U.S. Army Ordnance Artillery repair officer, 14 months of which were in Korea.

He joined the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, now the Draper Laboratory, in 1959He spent the last 63 years designing guidance and navigation systems for the Navy. He was finally fulfilling his childhood dream of being an inventor.

During this time he has served as program development manager for Navy Strategic Systems and technical director for advanced reentry interface. For 20 years he was head of FBM guidance systems responsible for Polaris, Poseidon and Trident systems.

He has been program manager for Navy Theater Missile Defense guidance SSP. He was the originator and developer of the concept of “normalized gyro”, the inventor of the all-attitude anti-gimbal-lock control systems and the holder of two patents. He was an expert in land, sea air and space weapons design, tactical and strategic ballistic missiles, reentry vehicles and inertial instruments and guidance systems.

He invented the Skymark Navigation system, a new form of navigating by the stars.

He is recognized as a technical expert in reentry vehicles. He has been called “an excellent visionary and planner of software design, inertial guidance systems analysis, and engineering management.” Having been at Draper for so long, he is known for knowing where all the bodies are buried.

Many of his inventions have been patented including a method for celestial navigation using multiple star observations, an Inspection Periscope, an Optical Accelerometer, a Torque Amplifier, and a Contact Insertion and Removal tool. One of his last projects before he became ill was inventing a recoilless gun.

Marvin had many other interests. He loved going to the ballet and chamber music concerts. He had an early interest in folk dancing. He was a voracious reader of science fiction and spent many hours building models of ships and planes. He loved his dogs Fluffy, Charlie and Rusty. He also loved hiking, biking and camping. He was a foodie and a very late diner and used to say to his wife “we’ve closed every restaurant in Boston”. Next to his family and his work, was his love of antique sports cars including his 1960 bug-eye Sprite and his 1957 Aston-Martin DB24 Mark 2 Drophead, one of only 16 manufactured.

Marvin is succeeded by Ellen, his wife of 52 years; his daughter Laura and daughter-in-law Ginny; his sister Anita; two nephews, Todd and Ricky; and his niece Pamela.

The funeral will be held at 11am on Sunday, May 21 at Levine Chapel, 470 Harvard St., Brookline, MA followed by burial at Sharon Memorial Park. Following the burial, shiva will be held at his late residence from 2:30 to 6pm.

In lieu of flowers, remembrances may be made to the Chelly Foundation, c/o Jason R. Baron, 7807 Stratford Road, Bethesda, MD 20814, www.thechellyfoundation.org or the KIND (Kids In Need of Defense) Foundation, 1201 L Street NW, 2nd Floor, Washington, DC 20005, https://supportkind.org