Stanley F. Schmidt January 21, 1926 – August 13, 2015

A Celebration of Life is planned on November 21, 2015; please check the mortuary website for further details. http://www.blackcoopersander.com/Obituaries.
 Stanley Francis Schmidt, a pioneering electrical engineer on the Apollo space exploration program, died on August 13, 2015, in Los Altos, CA. He was 89.
 Stan was born on January 21, 1926 in Hollister, CA to Fred and Edith (Bacon) Schmidt. Surviving are his beloved wife, Meredith (Hallenbeck); three children: Gregory (Cindy Lashbrook) Schmidt of Sunnyvale, Rick (Stacey Swenson) Schmidt of Prunedale, and Janis (David Pariseau) Schmidt of Los Altos; five grandchildren: Claire Schmidt, Laurel Schmidt, Isabella Mavrakos, Jack Mavrakos, and Natalie Schmidt; a sister, Charlotte Tranberg; and seven nieces and nephews.
 He was preceded in death by his parents, his brother, Jef Schmidt, and his sister, Nadine Hitchcock.
 Stan Schmidt achieved a lasting place in aerospace history with his work on the Apollo space exploration program. His adaptation of colleague Rudolf Kalman’s mathematical model for filtering meaningful signals from multiple sets of observations made it possible for the Apollo capsule to circumnavigate the Moon and return safely to Earth.
 He later collaborated on work that has made his and Kalman’s filtering model a standard tool for estimation problems in many fields today, including biology, medicine, oil exploration, traffic engineering, robotics, and power plant control.
 Stan was a talented musician who instilled a love of music in his children and grandchildren.
 He leaves behind a huge archive of recordings as well as a detailed family history that he devoted himself to in his later years.
 His family and many friends miss him deeply and cherish a long lifetime of wonderful memories.