Former Defense Secretary Ashton Carter Dies At 68

Ashton "Ash" Carter, a Secretary of Defense in the Obama administration, died on Monday. He was 68.

Carter served as Secretary of Defense for the last two years of Obama's term. During his tenure the military opened combat jobs to women and ended the ban on transgender people serving.

Carter's family said he died of cardiac arrest in Boston. He was serving as a professor and director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School.

"Ash Carter was a great American of the utmost integrity," President Joe Biden said in a statement Tuesday.

Obama tweeted that Carter was "a leader who left America—and the world—safer through his lifetime of service."

Before his appointment as defense secretary, Carter worked as the Obama administration's top procurement officer and helped send more than 24,000 mine-resistant vehicles to U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As the defense secretary, Carter opened combat jobs to women in 2015. The next year, he announced the end of the ban on transgender persons serving in the military.

Carter did not serve in the military but held several high-ranking Pentagon positions, including assistant secretary of defense for international security policy under then-President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1996.

He received a bachelor's degree from Yale University, double majoring in physics and medieval history. He earned a doctorate in theoretical physics from Oxford University. Carter was a Rhodes Scholar, an instructor at Oxford University and a fellow at Rockefeller University and MIT.

Carter is survived by his wife, Stephanie, and their two children.