Secretary of Defense under President Richard Nixon from June 28, 1973
to November 3, 1975. A conservative Republican, previously a teacher of
economics at the University of Virginia, senior staff member of the
conservative think-tank Rand Corporation, chairman of the Atomic Energy
Commission (appointed by Nixon on July 21, 1971), and director of the
Central Intelligence Agency for a few months in 1973. When President
Jimmy Carter launched the Department of Energy, Schlesinger was
appointed to be the first Secretary Of Energy (August 4, 1977; resigned
July 19, 1979).