American astronaut, the first American to emerge from an orbiting spacecraft and the first man to control his movements while floating in space, 3 June – July 1965, during the Gemini 4 mission. NASA selected him for their astronaut program on 17 September 1962. White attended the United States Military Academy and received his Bachelor of Science degree in 1952.
After leaving West Point, he underwent flight training and was sent to Germany for three years where he flew F-86s and F-100s. When he returned to the U.S., he continued his education at the University of Michigan, and in 1959, earned his Master of Science. He then went to the Test Pilot School at Edwards AFB, California, and upon completion, was assigned to Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio as an experimental test pilot. He was married with two children.
While the first manned flight of Project Apollo had been planned for the end of 1966, a number of problems delayed it until February 1967 and necessitated further flight simulations. While performing a launch pad test in their capsule on 27 January 1967, Cape Kennedy, FL, White and his fellow astronauts, Virgil I. Grissom and Roger B. Chaffee, were killed in a flash fire. While the test was originally designated AS-204, it was later renamed Apollo 1. On 19 March 1993, White was inducted into the Astronaut Hall of Fame.
Link to Wikipedia biography