George B. Bush, a physicist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory for nearly four decades, died July 16, 2011 at a nursing home in Lexington, Va., of complications after surgery for an abdominal obstruction.

He was 95.

Mr. Bush joined the Johns Hopkins lab in 1946 and worked on a number of projects related to missile and satellite systems, as well as antenna array designs, radio tracking of solar flares and ocean wave motion sensing. He retired in 1985 and continued working for the Applied Physics Laboratory as a consultant.

In 1998, he received a certificate of merit for his significant contributions to Navy navigation satellite systems and fleet ballistics missile programs.

George Bartram Bush was born into an Army family in Honolulu. He and his family moved to Seattle before settling in the late 1920s in Bethesda, where Mr. Bush attended Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School. After completing 11th grade, he went directly to college at George Washington University, from which he received a physics degree in 1938.

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, he was an examiner in the U.S. Patent Office and a physicist in the instrument research division of NASA's predecessor, the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics.

During WorldWar II, Mr. Bush worked for the Army Air Force as a civilian in the operations research section. Stationed in Europe, he interpreted photographs of bombing sites and helped develop a system to ensure accurate bombing of bridges.

A builder and inventor since childhood, Mr. Bush was an inveterate tinkerer who was always at work on a project. He built kites, model airplanes a number of original toys for his children, and he put together an early home-built personal computer.

In 2003, he participated in the competition to design a memorial at the site of the World Trade Center towers that fell in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Mr. Bush proposed building a large dome with special acoustics that would allow visitors to whisper to each other from points around the periphery.

Two of Mr. Bush's sons, George G. Bush and Alan Bush, died in childhood. Survivors include his wife of 65 years, Ethel Klinger Bush of Lexington; three children, Basira April Harpster of Shipman, Va., Wendy Duke of Glasgow, Va., and David Bush of Lexington; a sister, Virginia Potter of Potomac; a granddaughter; and two greatgrandchildren.

Arrangements are being handled by the Harrison Funeral Home & Crematory, Lexington, Virginia.