Frederick Joseph Bourgeois III
Fred was founder, owner and chief executive of an international, all-volunteer, 700+ member Google Lunar XPrize team, Team FREDNET, The Open Space Society, Inc. Beginning in 2009, he and his team worked to develop open source technology toward sending a robot to the moon. Fred’s heart was in this work and in the friendships he struck and nurtured across the world.
Though his heart was strong, in December 2016 at age 54, Fred succumbed to carcinoid cancer.
While teacher, physicist, computer geek, southern boy, inventor, cyber security expert, musical composer and performer identify Fred, the words neither fully describe nor capture his spirit like the words of a close colleague. “He was an amazing man. It is extremely rare that a person is both brilliant, yet humble. Optimistic, yet realistic. Creative, yet practical. Quiet, yet bold. Appreciative, yet demanding our best. Gentlemanly, yet powerful. No job was too big for him, yet none too small. No one intimidated him, yet he did not want to intimidate anyone.”
Fred earned undergraduate and advanced degrees from Tulane University.